Public Domain Photographs & Drawings

3,031 pix as of 01 dec 10 / greg goebel

* This page provides sets of high-resolution public-domain photographs taken by yours truly, as well as a set digital drawings. As far as I'm concerned, they are all my own work, are public domain, and free for all use. Unfortunately, copyright laws are being indefinitely extended and some people take a view of their intellectual property rights that exceeds even that elastic limit, and so I can't guarantee that somebody won't make a fuss over pix taken in their facility or of their properties. Many museums in particular proclaim that no commercial use may be made of pictures taken on their premises.

However, though I am against blatant intellectual property theft, I'm also against an unlimited view of personal rights. It is both illegal and unethical to pirate music or videos or other artworks, but to the extent that people make claims well beyond that level of rights, it is up to them to enforce them, and if they don't I regard their claims as simply blowing smoke. In any case, I don't make any commercial use of these images and don't bring in any money from them, and so it would be difficult to demonstrate financial damages.

I've never actually had any such problems myself, suggesting that to the extent that people make far-reaching claims, they rarely bother to enforce them. I usually list the location where pictures were taken; if you're really worried, contact the people in charge. Sorry, I don't have contacts. Each entry on these pages includes a description, along with the resolution in pixels and the size in K(ilobytes), and the year the picture was taken.

Check the LATEST UPLOADS for recent additions. The photos are organized into sets by topic. Please be aware that the images on these pages are all provided with a medium-resolution version, accessed by the thumbnail, and a high-resolution copy, accessed by a link at the end of the image caption. People have an odd tendency to miss the high-resolution version.