Paint my Photo and online photos free of copyright

If you want to paint from photos but don't have a wide variety of photos of your own to use as reference, I invite you to check out Paint My Photo. It is a web site for artists who are interested in painting from photos who also want to be able to access reference photos taken by other people to do this - all without issues on the copyright of the images. Ever wanted photos of elephants or eagles in their natural habitat but have not had the privilege of travelling to locations where these animals live free - well Paint My Photo can help you. 

This site was created with the intent that reference photos supplied by photographers are copyright free and hence can be used by artists to produce art which they can sell without a fee to the photographer. In principle, all that is asked is that you provide credit to the photographer.  You might want to check out the web site yourself for the details about copyright as it might not be as simple as I've explained.

Joining this web site is free, however, donations are encouraged to cover the expenses, of which storage is a large portion. 

Today there are nearly 105,000 photos and 20,500 members on this site, which is also referred to as PMP for short. Luckily there is a search function and pre-made searches to help those looking for specific photos.  However, there are so many photos that it may take a while to find photos if you're looking for something specific.  You just have to be patient.

Artist can also upload their paintings that have been inspired from a Paint My Photo  photograph. Painting from other sources of inspiration should not be uploaded to this site.

I'm sure that there are other similar sites.  If you know of other sites that are similar to this one, please use the comment function below and share those other sites with us.

Other sites (added after original publication)
https://www.arttutor.com/group/reference-photos-group
http://painting.about.com/od/artistreferencephotos/
http://www.morguefile.com/archive
http://www.photos4artists.co.uk/
http://www.copyrightfreephotos.com/

This week's art find is Chen-Wen Cheng. He just won first place at the World Watercolour Competition in Narbonne France in October 2014.

Did you know that five of the seven prizes at this competition were won by Chinese artists?

Have a good week
Danielle