Fair Use Policy
Pictures are very important in geology. Most of the images on About Geology are created and owned by me. As such, I hold all the rights to them and license them to About.com. But in some cases, you can make free use of them too.Educational Use of My Images
I look kindly on people who wish to use my images for limited educational purposes. Briefly, teachers and students in nonprofit schools may incorporate as many as five images in education-related things like papers and reports, class notes (including online class notes), handouts, and computer displays. Teachers may use them for no more than two years, except for things like portfolios. (The agonizing details are given under the educational fair use guidelines established by the U.S. Congress. My rules are adapted from university library policies and appear to be as legally strong as anyone else's.)
You may use my images for these purposes if you do three things:
- Copy or download them from this site (no need to ask me first). Use only the image, not my caption, my article, or any of About.com's content. It's important to me that you write your own supporting text in your own original words.
- Use them without significant changes. I make my images to look and work their best at a certain size and shape. Some cropping is OK, because sometimes that's just necessary. Shrinking them is OK too, but don't enlarge them significantly. Don't change the file format, either, because the results are usually bad.
- Include their source whenever you use them. The language I prefer is "Copyright [year] by Andrew Alden, geology.about.com, reproduced under educational fair use." It would be especially nice if you include a link to the page where the image came from.
If you do those three things, you don't even have to tell me about it—but I hope you'll let me know anyway. You can write me and ask for permission, in which case you can say "used by permission" instead of "reproduced under educational fair use."
Free Wallpaper Pictures
Some places I've been are so beautiful that I give away the pictures at full screen size—800x600, 1024x768 or 1280x1024 pixels. See these in the Wallpaper Picture Gallery. You can download them and use them freely (1) at home or (2) in presentations.
Images that Are Not Mine
Some of the images on my site are created by the U.S. government and its agencies. These are not subject to copyright and may be used freely.
Some other images are by other people or agencies, used here by permission. And some come from commercial sources such as Getty Images. You have the right to make educational fair use of those, too, but follow the fair use guidelines carefully.
Buying Images
If you take my images from About.com and use them (1) on your own Web sites or (2) for commercial purposes, I will start by asking you to stop that use. Both About.com and its parent company, the New York Times, stand behind that request. However, I'm happy to sell my images. At the bottom of every page on this site is a Reprints link, where you can put a formal request to About.com. In many cases I can supply a different image of the same subject. If you're interested in that, inquire directly to me.
