FIRST Stock Photos

[ChuckDickerson]

We are putting together an informational/sponsorship document to give out to people interested in our team and potential sponsors similar to the great one recently posted in the whitepapers by Team 1538. We have the document text written and have included photos specific to our team (taken by us) but are looking for generic stock photos of the competition events/venues, shots of student excitement, pit areas, etc. We are looking for photos that capture what it is like to be at competition not specific photos of gearboxes, arms, drivetrains, etc. or "robot portraits" like are at FIRSTRobotics.net. We know that FIRST has a gallery here: http://www.usfirst.org/4vol/resourcectr/photogallery/2005/index.html but there are only 20 photos for 2005 and to be honest many are dark and don't really capture the essence of competition that we are looking for. BTW: We assume that since these are located here under the "Resource Center" and that "Resource Center allows remote access to the documents you need to recruit new sponsors, teams and volunteers, and, continue to grow FIRST." that these photos are available to be used by teams in sponsorship documents, etc. as long a photo credit is given to the photographer (Adriana M. Groisman). Please correct me if this is not the case.

Does anyone know if there is a better or more extensive gallery of these type stock photos available for teams to use that is "public domain"? We don't want to infringe on any copyright issues.

[Rod]

Check out the picture galleries here on Chief Delphi Link (http://www.chiefdelphi.com/forums/pictures.php?) . There are about 1,700 for 2005. Let me know if you need more links.
See you in Denver.

[Beth Sweet]

As to the legality issue, every team is required to submit those forms every year that says FIRST can use their image in any way they feel neccessary (publication etc) so yes, you can use those. If you're looking for people cheering, I have a few.

[artdutra04]

We know that FIRST has a gallery here: http://www.usfirst.org/4vol/resourcectr/photogallery/2005/index.html but there are only 20 photos for 2005 and to be honest many are dark and don't really capture the essence of competition that we are looking for.

...

Does anyone know if there is a better or more extensive gallery of these type stock photos available for teams to use that is "public domain"? We don't want to infringe on any copyright issues.
You can usually correct dark photographs very well using a "Midtones Adjust" feature in photo editing software. Adjusting the midtones of images works wonders to brighten dark pictures without ruining the contrast or saturation. http://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/images/smilies/10.gif Here is a before and after version of one of the pictures from the FIRST website:

Before: (Directly from FIRST website)

http://www.usfirst.org/4vol/resourcectr/photogallery/2005/Students/Student_7.jpg


After a Simple Midtone Adjust:

http://img243.imageshack.us/img243/9866/student74me.jpg


As for a good source of stock FIRST pictures, you can try robotphotos.org (http://robotphotos.org/).
Our primary mission is to provide royalty-free, high quality digital photographs for the promotion of FIRST Robotics. Most of what we have has been made available for free, with some restrictions. In many cases, print-resolution photos are also available, on request.
You can also try searching though the new CD Media (www.chiefdelphi.com/media/), which allows you to search through the ChiefDelphi Image Galleries.

There are also a ton of good pictures on invisiblerobot.com (http://www.invisiblerobot.com/robotics/), as evident in Billfred's Caption Contests. All the pictures there are copyrighted material, so you would need to contact them to seek permission to use them.

<Shameless plug> There are nearly a thousand pictures on my team's website (www.team228.org), which you can use if you want - as long as mention they are from our website. :)

[Greg Marra]

You can usually correct dark photographs very well using a "Midtones Adjust" feature in photo editing software. Adjusting the midtones of images works wonders to brighten dark pictures without ruining the contrast or saturation.

Without trying to hijack this thread too much, beware if you do use this technique. The second photograph is visably noisier than the original, in that it brings out the imperfections in the smoothness of color in the original photograph. While it's not too bad in that photo, the darker your photo is the less likely it is to come out unscathed.

[Ashley Christine]

My team has A GAZILLION pictures on our team site.
Some may be of interest to you.

http://rollingthunder.smugmug.com

[Jon Jack]

I would sugest using very high resolution (atleast 3.2 megapixels) photographs. We had a member volunteer to sit in the stands at the Las Vegas Regional last year with a 5 (maybe 6) megapixel camera and take as many pictures as he could. We ended up with about a DVD-R full of pictures not to include other high resolution pictures taken by other students. Considering we only used 14 of the roughly 2000 pictures we have from last year we have plenty left over that we would be more than happy to give to people... Maybe I'll talk to our web site team and have them put most of them up there. Is anybody interested? It would be a safe bet to say we have multiple pictures of every team that went to the Las Vegas Regional last year.

The reason I sugest using high resolution pictures is because then you don't run the risk of pictures printing poorly/pixelated/too small/blury. If anyone needs picture(s) right away email me jjack@team1538.com with a description of the picture you are looking for and I will find a way to get it to you. If you can wait a few weeks you can go on our website and find about 900~2000 high resolution pictures.

[ChuckDickerson]

Thanks for all the information! We have dug through all of our team photos and completed our draft document. We only needed to use 1 non-team taken photo from the FIRST gallery.

[Joe Ross]

As to the legality issue, every team is required to submit those forms every year that says FIRST can use their image in any way they feel neccessary (publication etc) so yes, you can use those. If you're looking for people cheering, I have a few.

The release (http://www.usfirst.org/robotics/2005/site_info/2005_consent_release_form.pdf) gives FIRST the copywrite for the images/videos. It doesn't make it availible to the FIRST community. To use the images on the FIRST website, you would need permission from FIRST.


There are also a ton of good pictures on invisiblerobot.com (http://www.invisiblerobot.com/robotics/), as evident in Billfred's Caption Contests. All the pictures there are copyrighted material, so you would need to contact them to seek permission to use them.

Every picture is copywrited unless someone specifically disclaims the copywrite and puts it in the public domain. Eric Carlson made it clear that the photos at invisiblerobot.com are copywrited, but even if he left that note off the bottom of the website, it doesn't change anything legally.



For everyone linking to their team's website, did you get the permission of every photographer who's pictures are posted? I can think of at least one example where somone on chiefdelphi gave permission for people to use the photos on their team's website, and later the photographer denied the usage of those photos.

[CraigHickman]

You can try ours, but we haven't taken too many at competitions...

www.lahsrobotics.org

[Ashley Christine]

For everyone linking to their team's website, did you get the permission of every photographer who's pictures are posted? I can think of at least one example where somone on chiefdelphi gave permission for people to use the photos on their team's website, and later the photographer denied the usage of those photos.

Its okay. I took about half the pictures and a mentor took the others, and I know they wouldnt mind our team getting out there more. :)

[Jon Jack]

Just today we have updated our web site with a picture gallery. The gallery is not yet linked off of our homepage, but you can access it through http://team1538.com/gallery/ we will try to put more pictures up there in the coming days (we have several thousand to sort through). We are also allowing anyone to use these pictures. So far the teams who are featured in our gallery are:
60, 64, 359, 368, 440, 473, 496, 878, 990, 991, 1101, 1110, 1159, 1266, 1324, 1378, 1425, 1505, 1527, 1538, 1585, 1613, 1631, 1641

I know there are teams who attended the 2005 Las Vegas Regional who do not have pictures up on our site right now... I assure all of you that we will have pictures of you in our gallery as soon as possible.

Other pictures we have up from the 2005 Las Vegas Regional: Driver Meeting, Pits and Empty Playing Field...

[MissInformation]

As for the pictures on invisiblerobot.com, we're pretty much okay with allowing people to use our photos, Eric prefers some kind of credit given (you know, photos provided from InvisibleRobot.com or something like that). I tend to only get a bit snarly if it's something of mine and someone outright lies and said they did it.

Of course, most of our photos are going to be team 116 centered, but at competitions we try to photograph everything.

Heidi