While intended for curator use, this project is open to everyone who'd like to help.

For Master Profiles in the photographic era, and especially those for living people, finding copyright-friendly images can be surprisingly difficult. Please use this project for the following purposes:

1. Adding Master Profiles that need photos
2. Fulfilling other curators' photo requests

Having this list will help us remember which celebrities/notables we need to keep re-searching to find images. Using sites like Wikipedia/Wikimedia, Openverse/Creative Commons Search, Library of Congress, and others is a great approach, but it can often take multiple searches over a long period of time before something shows up that's usable. So keep trying!

When you find an acceptable photo, remember to 1) add all necessary attribution info, 2) lock the image as the profile's default, and 3) remove the profile from this project.

If you are not a curator and you fulfill a requested photo, please leave a comment here so the image can be flagged for a lock.

Thank you for your help!

Resources

Places to search for acceptable photos include:

• Wikimedia Commons
  • Tip: Try the person's Wikipedia page first, since it will feature the best Wikimedia image
• Openverse / Creative Commons Search
  • Remember to restrict your search to "Use for commercial purposes"
• USA.gov Images Search
  • Tip: You can often find celebrity and non-U.S. photos here, so don't overlook it!
• British Library Public Domain Search
  • Good source for older images and project photos
• Europeana.eu Free-to-Use
  • A special search tool for more than 13.5 million European cultural images
• National Library of Australia Pictures
  • Caution: Not all are of public domain, so read guidelines and attribution requirements carefully
• Geograph Britain & Ireland
  • Location images; especially useful for geographic projects
• Picryl
  • International public domain image search engine
• Paris Musées
  • Many photos and portraits available; follow each image's attached citation guidelines
• Florida Memory
  • Locals and famous folks alike who were photographed at events in Florida; read each photo's license
• OpenClipArt
  • More useful for project photos than profiles, but worth knowing about
• DVIDS
  • Public domain U.S. military photos; often includes international politicians and military leaders
• Smithsonian Open Access
  • 4.5 million images of portraits, photos, artifacts, and more; great for projects

Other possible sources include:

• Newspaper archives
  • In certain situations, photos from older U.S. newspapers can be used; see here and here
• Signatures
  • Signatures are believed to be ineligible for copyright and therefore in the public domain because they fall below the required level of originality for copyright protection both in the United States and in the source country (if different). Caution: Not all signatures are copyright-free and free from privacy especially to those who that are living, so read guidelines carefully.

Please remember that most websites, including the results from Google Image Search, use copyrighted images. As a result, we cannot use them on Geni. Common examples of unacceptable sources include, but are not limited to:

• Alamy Stock Photo
• Alchetron
• Daily Mail
• E! Online
• Ethnicelebs
• Getty Images
• Google Image Search
• IMDb
• Page Six
• PRPhotos
• WireImages
• Zimbio

Attribution

To properly attribute a photo, you should include 1) the photographer's name and/or agency, 2) the specific license or public domain rationale, and 3) a link to the original source.

Wikipedia/Wikimedia

An example of how to properly attribute a Wikipedia/Wikimedia photo can be found at our project's sample photo. The text in the attribution reads as follows:

Photo by Joel Rouse of the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence; retouched by Wikipedia user nagualdesign. Licensed under the United Kingdom Open Government Licence v3.0 (OGL v.3). Via Wikimedia Commons at https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Queen_Elizabeth_II_in_Mar...

Note that all of this information comes directly from the image's Wikimedia Commons page and is easy to copy-and-paste, so this is not a laborious process.

Openverse

Attributing a photo from Openverse/Creative Commons Search is even easier -- simply click the yellow "Copy" button below the attribution field, then paste it into Geni's "Attribution" field: