Nature photographs - public domain?

[Erin_MA]

I’m working on a project and hope this is okay to ask here!
Could you recommend a place to find public domain or creative commons photos of leafs, etc., for tree identification. Bonus points if they have no background but that’s not a deal breaker. Having more trouble finding these than I thought! Thanks for any tips :)

[murphyslab]

There are plenty of photos available under Creative Commons licenses on iNat. In fact, you can filter observations by license:

https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/48227-Acer-macrophyllum/browse_photos?photo_license=cc-by

Another place I’d try is Archive.org. There’s a huge collection of digitized books, many of which are out of copyright:

https://archive.org/details/books?and[]=tree+identification&sin=

[Erin_MA]

Awesome! Thanks so much @murphyslab!

[jnstuart]

Try Flickr also. Lots of images there are Creative Commons.

[exonie]

And of course, Wikimedia Commons. The largest repository of freely usable media (64 million files):
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

[libele]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Public_domain_image_resources
list of lists of lists

[teellbee]

If you use the image search feature at google.com you can use Advanced Search settings to screen images for Creative Common licenses.

[biosam]

Lots of good suggestions here. Another resource is https://www.forestryimages.org (mixture of licenses).

Just remember there’s a difference between Creative Commons and Public Domain: most Creative Commons licenses require attributing (crediting) the original creator, and some prohibit commercial use or derivatives. Material in the Public Domain means there are no restrictions whatsoever (no copyright), and can be used freely for any purpose.