Following my previous post which dispelled the tech-apologists’ claim that publicly available high resolution pictures are hard to find, many of you kindly responded in comments and DMs with links to even more free-to-use picture resources for your writing, 10 more of which I’ve linked below 👇

1. Open Content Programme by Getty 🇺🇸

getty.edu/projects/open-content-program

The Open Content Program makes high-resolution images of public domain artwork from the Getty collections freely available, without restrictions, to advance the research, teaching, and practice of art and art history.

Since 2013, over 160,000 images of public-domain art and archives in the Getty collections have been made freely available. Cataloging, digitization, rights review, and publishing of the collections are ongoing, adding more images to the Program monthly.

Jordan Acosta: Note that whilst the front page is well constructed, the search feature looks and feels like it was conceived in 2001. However, once you’ve found something you like, the actual record page is easy to navigate and the images easy to download in a number of different sizes.

🎩 Hat Tip: S Callisto Burwitz

2. Web umenia 🇸🇰

webumenia.sk/en

Web umenia is an on-line catalog of artworks from the collections of Slovak galleries registered in the Central Register of Artworks.

Here you can find information about artworks and artists as well as articles and thematic collections. Artworks information and digital images are pulled from the CEDVU system (Central Register of Artworks), where they are inserted and regularly updated by the curators.

JA: Slovakia’s digitised art are not only a wonder, but conveniently accessible with this easy to navigate website which has English localisation in the top corner.

🎩 Hat Tip: Michaela Ahonen

3. The New York Public Library Digital Collections 🇺🇸

digitalcollections.nypl.org

The New York Public Library (NYPL) Digital Collections platform is the primary portal for engaging with our digitized collections and their descriptions, over 922,495 items and counting. While that is a small fraction of the Library's overall holdings, it is representative of the diversity of our vast collections—from books to videos, maps to manuscripts, illustrations to photos, and more.

JA: The above link specifically takes you images that are in the Public Domain. If you want to check out the rest of the collection, just note there may be copyright restrictions, so do your due diligence on the wording.

🎩 Hat Tip: S Callisto Burwitz

4. Wikimedia Commons

commons.wikimedia.org

Wikimedia Commons, a collection of 118,508,614 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute

JA: This one should’ve been included in my previous post, but better late than never. I am of the opinion Wikipedia and associated projects is one of the greatest endeavours ever conceived by humanity, and their media commons database is worth looking into.

🎩 Hat Tip: Claire Laporte

5. Rawpixel

rawpixel.com/public-domain

The world’s best free to use art collection. Sourced and digitally enhanced from our own original works and International museums. Free to use as you like with the CC0 license :)

JA: The above link steers you towards Rawpixel’s free-to-use images which are nicely categorised. FYI, you’ll need to sign up for an account to access the download options.

🎩 Hat Tip: Hugo Santos

6. National Gallery of Art 🇺🇸

nga.gov/artwork-search

Our open data program is a natural extension of the National Gallery’s mission: to welcome all people to explore and experience art, creativity, and our shared humanity.

Free open access image downloads are now available directly from the object pages located on this website. More than 60,000 images are available for download, and we will continue to add more as they become available.

Images of these works are available free of charge for any use, whether commercial or non-commercial.

JA: Another very well presented website, but be wary that many of the images you come across may not be available to download despite the fact they’re in the public domain.

🎩 Hat Tip: S Callisto Burwitz

7. NASA’s Astronomical Picture of the Day 🇺🇸

apod.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix

Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer.

JA: The daily archive listing goes all the way back to 2015, and what the very utilitarian website lacks in aesthetics is compensated by the vast array of space photography.

🎩 Hat Tip: S Callisto Burwitz

8. DigitaltMuseum 🇸🇪 🇳🇴

digitaltmuseum.se

The objective of DigitaltMuseum is that museums’ collections should be made available to anybody who is interested, regardless of time or place. It is hoped that it will now be easier for these collections to be used for image searching, in-depth research, studies, education and for the mutual development of knowledge.

JA: The above link will take you to the Swedish version of the digitised collection with filters for CC0 and Public Domain switched on. Note, many of the visual assets may not be in high resolution.

🎩 Hat Tip: Jörgen Löwenfeldt

9. Art Institute Chicago 🇺🇸

artic.edu

Founded in 1879, the Art Institute of Chicago is one of the world’s major museums, housing an extraordinary collection of objects from across places, cultures, and time. We are also a place of active learning for all—dedicated to investigation, innovation, education, and dialogue—continually aspiring to greater public service and civic engagement.

Explore thousands of artworks in the museum’s collection—from our renowned icons to lesser-known works from every corner of the globe—as well as our books, writings, reference materials, and other resources.

JA: The above link will take you to the Public Domain items in the Artic’s collection, which also features comprehensive information and attribution about the picture. Wonderful.

🎩 Hat Tip: Swabreen Bakr

10. Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek

deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de

Paintings, books, music, sculptures, films, photographs, files, manuscripts and much, much more: the Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek (German Digital Library) gives all users access to Germany's digitised cultural and scientific heritage.

We invite you to discover the exciting cultural objects from the German Digital Library in new contexts - organised thematically in our dossiers. Find out more about German-German history, explore other countries in the travel dossier or enjoy art and artists in our art dossier.

JA: Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek is a visual aggregator from many different German cultural institutions, and offers a wide range of mediums to explore.

🎩 Hat Tip: S Callisto Burwitz

The sum of humanity’s visual culture – enshrined by the copyright system – is currently under siege.

This unprecedented and blatant theft by AI companies to train their models as they war for market dominance is so vast, it literally defies comprehension; so please link and share the resources from these brilliant and tireless cultural institutions who deserve our support and patronage •

Many thanks for reading. Jordan Acosta is a British-Filipino speculative writer and creative director based near London.

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The Dispatch is his monthly roundup, published every first Thursday. Subscribe for news, short reviews and more at jordanacosta.co.

The other day, I posted the following Substack Note:

My opinion was challenged with two now-familiar rebuttals:

1. The vast majority of writers on Substack don’t have the artistic/design skills or resources to find or create a striking cover thumbnail that will attract attention;

2. There’s ‘no difference’ between using stock imagery and images created from prompts in Generative AI

For the purposes of this post, I’d like to offer my own rebuttal to this first point1: bullshit.

My entire professional career as a creative director has been spent working with archive and visual material within the legal framework of copyright law. I can confidently suggest you don’t have to be an artistic prodigy to illustrate a written post without resorting to GenAI prompting.

In no particular order, here are ten (mainly) English-language online resources which cumulatively gives you access to millions of free-to-use images that you can illustrate your Substack Publication, blogs, social media posts, newsletters, TTRPGs, poems, short stories, or whatever else you can think of.

1. Wellcome Collection 🇬🇧

wellcomecollection.org

Wellcome Collection is a free museum and library. Our collections are an incredible resource for all kinds of research, whether you are an artist or writer looking for inspiration, an academic researcher, or just curious about something in our exhibitions. They contain an array of topics relating to health and the human experience in many forms, from recently published books to historical manuscripts and objects.

Jordan Acosta: Not only is the museum in Euston worth a visit if you’re ever in London for its wonderful exhibitions, their online collection of historical works is unparalleled and available in high resolution.

2. Public Domain Image Archive from The Public Domain Review 🇬🇧

pdimagearchive.org

Explore our hand-picked collection of 10,046 out-of-copyright works, free for all to browse, download, and reuse. This is a living database with new images added every week.

JA: I’m a big fan of the Public Domain Review, so much so, my editorial work at Unseen Histories has similar themes of stories behind publicly available visual material. With their new image archive, their excellently curated pictures are easy to access.

3. David Rumsey Map Collection 🇺🇸

davidrumsey.com

David Rumsey has donated his entire physical map collection to Stanford University. Digitization of the collection began in 1996 and there are now over 140,000 items online, with new additions added regularly. The site is free and open to the public. Here viewers have access not only to high resolution images of maps that are extensively cataloged, but also to a variety of tools that allow users to compare, analyze, and view items in new and experimental ways.

JA: The map collection is vast and unbelievably detailed. I could (and have) spent hours browsing through our cartographic history.

4. Rijksmuseum Collection 🇳🇱

rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection

With the launch of the new Online Collection, the Rijksmuseum brings art and history closer than ever. This innovative platform opens a world of beauty and knowledge, where images, archival sources, stories, and research come together.

JA: There are over three quarters of a million digitised artworks and publications in the Netherlands’ national art museum’s online collection; you simply need to sign up for a free account to access the entire collection.

5. Unsplash 🇨🇦

unsplash.com

Over 6 million free high-resolution photos and illustrations brought to you by the world’s most generous community of contributors.

JA: As Unsplash is now owned by Getty, there are now paid-for offerings in the search. Make sure you search for ‘Free’ images only under Unsplash’s license. If you want to curate your own image collections for future posts, you can sign up for a free account. Speaking of, you can check out Unseen Histories’ account on Unsplash with restored and colorized photographs by me which you can use, for free.

6. The Library of Congress 🇺🇸

loc.gov

The Library of Congress is the largest library in the world, with millions of books, films and video, audio recordings, photographs, newspapers, maps and manuscripts in its collections. The Library is the main research arm of the U.S. Congress and the home of the U.S. Copyright Office.

JA: The LOC is an amazing resource if you know your way around. I recommend you narrow your search by clicking on ‘Photo, Print, Drawing’ and ‘Image’ when you look around. You can also view as a gallery instead of a list. When you reach the page you want, select your download option: beware, the small JPEG images are miniscule, so you’ll want to for the largest JPEG or TIFF file you can. TIFFs are uncompressed bitmaps, so they are large. I recommend using a bitmap editor like Photoshop, Affinity or GIMP (linked below) to crop and export to a manageable size.

7. The Met Collection 🇺🇸

metmuseum.org/art/collection

Travel around the world and across 5,000 years of history through 490,000+ works of art.

JA: The Met (like the Wellcome Collection and the Rijksmuseum) have an excellently presented and curated Public Domain collection. Just make sure you have ‘Open Access’ ticked to avoid unwittingly downloading and using copyrighted material.

8. Europeana 🇪🇺

europeana.eu/en

The Europeana website provides cultural heritage enthusiasts, professionals, teachers, and researchers with access to Europe's digital cultural heritage. We give you access to millions of items from providing institutions across Europe. Discover artworks, books, music, and videos on art, newspapers, archaeology, fashion, science, sport, and much more.

JA: Europeana works a little differently than the other resources, inasmuch as they’re a shop window for dozens of cultural and academic institutions, so finding a high resolution image can be tricky. You’ll have to also navigate their slightly awkward interface to make sure you have permission to download and use the visual material properly.

9. National Library of Norway 🇳🇴

nb.no/en

The National Library of Norway’s collection contains everything from books, magazines, music, film, radio and TV programmes, pictures, photographs, theatre material, maps, posters and newspapers to unique handicraft collections and special book collections.

JA: Whilst the interface can be switched to English, search terms aren’t. Get your online translator ready to input the Norwegian words for things if you’re looking for something specific.

10. GIMP

gimp.org

GIMP is a cross-platform image editor available for GNU/Linux, macOS, Windows and more operating systems. It is free software, you can change its source code and distribute your changes.

Whether you are a graphic designer, photographer, illustrator, or scientist, GIMP provides you with sophisticated tools to get your job done.

JA: The terribly-named GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is not a picture resource, but a free, open source picture editor which allows you to do things like crop pictures, or superimpose text on them. There’s a bunch of mobile apps that can do something similar, but if you want more creative control on a computer, then learning an image editor like GIMP is worth the investment of time to learn. I also recommend Affinity Photo (award winning Photoshop competitor, pay once) if you don’t like Adobe’s eye-watering subscriptions to access their Creative Cloud.

With the visual abundance linked above, I’ll reiterate my original position: if you choose to use AI generated imagery to illustrate a Substack post, then I will reasonably assume that the writing bit may have also been partly or wholly generated by AI. Therefore, I will choose to not support, read or share your publication.

After all, if I think you haven’t bothered to write your own thoughts, opinions and prose without resorting to a machine to write it for you, then why should I bother to read it? There’s plenty of other writers with small subscriber lists like mine who can articulate their thoughts and have interesting things to say.

Many will regard this as a hardline stance, and that I should accept what’s coming. To that I say bullshit. I have no issue with the technology; but I take great issue with the abuse of the technology and I empathise with working creatives who have had their livelihoods made materially more difficult by those who do not value their work enough to compensate them.

If you disagree, you’re welcome to prompt a response and publish it on your own corner of Substack.

For the rest of us: I look forward to seeing what you do with the amazing visuals made available by these institutions. If you’d like to share any other free resources like the above (especially in other languages), please drop them in the comments below •

Coda

So many of you read and shared this, and I received recommendations for resources I wasn’t aware of. I’ve compiled ten more in this follow up post:

More Free-to-use Picture Resources for Writers

Many thanks for reading. Jordan Acosta is a British-Filipino speculative writer and creative director based near London.

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The Dispatch is his monthly roundup, published every first Thursday. Subscribe for news, short reviews and more at jordanacosta.co.

We’ve all been there, trying to pick out what to read next from a dizzying array of books lined up on shelves or screens. With so much visual noise, the blurb1 – the back cover copy, rather than the nice comments from other authors – remains one of the most effective aids to making this decision, as it’s the first point of contact a reader has with a book beyond the cover. Its job is to get across a sense of genre and voice, to seize the reader’s attention in the hope of hooking them into buying the book.

I like reading blurbs as inspiration on how to write my own, but lately I’ve also come to appreciate its value as a means to explore ideas for future novels, before I’ve written a single line of prose. After all, if I’m going to commit months or years to turning an idea into a novel, then I’d better make sure I’m interested in the idea.

Coming up with an idea is the easy bit. Writing my own blurb – as a pitch – helps me give the idea shape, to clarify the story in my mind, and to pose questions like what’s it about? Who’s in it? Where is it? What happens? What feelings am I trying to evoke in a reader?

Answering these questions using a blurb is something I’ve been doing to generate the premise for my next novel. My goal is to write an exciting premise that gives me a sense of the story between 100-250 words.

Consider the following blurb for Stephen King’s Misery (1987):

Paul Sheldon used to write for a living. Now he's writing to stay alive.

Misery Chastain is dead. Paul Sheldon has just killed her - with relief, with joy. Misery made him rich; she was the heroine of a string of bestsellers. And now he wants to get on to some real writing.

That's when the car accident happens, and he wakes up splinted and in pain, in the remote mountain home of his rescuer, Annie Wilkes.

The good news is that Annie was a nurse and has pain-killing drugs. The bad news is that she has long been Paul's Number One Fan. And when she finds out what Paul has done to Misery, she doesn't like it. She doesn't like it at all… [123 words]

King’s delightfully unhinged story about fandom has all the ingredients of a commercial thriller/horror: the disgruntled protagonist, a remote setting and an unlikely villain in the form of a nurse. It straight away poses a series of intriguing questions: can Sheldon escape? Who is Misery? How far is help? The most intriguing line appears right at the end of the blurb, and imparts a sense of existential dread: when she finds out what Paul has done to Misery, she doesn't like it. She doesn't like it at all…

Here’s another:

Piranesi lives in the House. Perhaps he always has.

In his notebooks, day after day, he makes a clear and careful record of its wonders: the labyrinth of halls, the thousands upon thousands of statues, the tides that thunder up staircases, the clouds that move in slow procession through the upper halls. On Tuesdays and Fridays Piranesi sees his friend, the Other. At other times he brings tributes of food to the Dead. But mostly, he is alone.

Messages begin to appear, scratched out in chalk on the pavements. There is someone new in the House. But who are they and what do they want? Are they a friend or do they bring destruction and madness as the Other claims?

Lost texts must be found; secrets must be uncovered. The world that Piranesi thought he knew is becoming strange and dangerous.

The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite [151 words]

The back cover for Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi (reviewed here) is wonderfully constructed. As a reader, the first line alone asks of us three questions: Who is Piranesi? Where or what is the House? How long has he been in the House? In the next paragraph, we get a glimpse of his world (or rather, the House) as a sort of magical, colossal museum, followed by a hint that all is not well and a mystery is waiting to be unravelled.

All that in just over 150 words. We infer that Piranesi is a special, whimsical book; a story that is not just fantastical, but one endowed with a mythical flavour.

If I’d come up with this copy, you bet I’d want to write it.

Pitching Myself

For me, trying to preemptively write my own blurb is a great way of turning an idea or bullet point hastily typed on my phone into something more; not as an explanatory note accompanying a finished painting, but an exploratory sketch drawn at the beginning.

In other words, I’m effectively pitching2 myself a novel.

Of all the ideas I have for future novels, most are simply vignettes in my mind, or barely comprehensible notes: glimpses of locations, or snatches of dialogue and other interactions between as-yet unnamed characters. Writing the blurb first gives me a way to think about how to bring these ingredients together, but also – crucially – to test out the robustness of a story idea.

To my immense surprise, I recently found a note I wrote to myself in December 2019, which is the earliest pitch of the idea for novel #1:

Humanity teeters on precipice of extinction. The 21st century’s climate predictions have come to pass. Most of the Known World is now flooded, or turned to desert after the Melt. Only the polar latitudes now truly habitable, and wars of conquest are fought to control. In the arctic, Greenland remains as the last territory, where The Greater Kingdom of Danmark is beset by the NorAm Coalition and the People's Federation of China and Russia.

In a way, I wouldn’t even really call this a pitch, but rather some thoughts on a setting as the backdrop for a story. I do remember a tremendous feeling of possibility at the time, though, which inspired me to begin drawing a map, which helped me figure out the rest. The trick for figuring out the rest is to start asking questions: do I need to pivot to a different period or location? Would the idea be even better if I did X or Y? Can the characters change?

Do I need to develop a different story idea, instead?

What I’ve found is that if I can’t tweak my initial idea to satisfactorily answer the first three questions, then it may be that the answer to the last question is ‘yes’, and maybe I need to move on to a new story idea. Sometimes, though, an idea can dig its claws in, and it becomes difficult to let go. What I’m looking for is a pitch which can survive all of the restrictions, variations and changes I can throw at it, with the essence of the story idea remaining unchanged. If an idea can withstand the mental contortions I subject it to, it’s probably worth writing the pitch copy for it and seeing where it leads.

Case in point, below is the current blurb for Dark Century, the novel which that initial idea back in 2019 eventually turned into:

Something stalks the riverlands of New Eden.

In its wake, death and sickness follow, and the northern provinces writhe in the hysterical grip of witch fever.

Provost Martin Kolding — a ruthless servant of Denmark’s Interior Ministry — sets off to track down a missing associate and restore order before unrest erupts across the Kingdom.

Meanwhile Ulyana, a half-Russian survivor, is caught between the new empires of the post-collapse world. Abandoned by her people as a result of a genetic curse, she ekes out a miserable existence in the wasteland she once called home; making a Faustian pact to survive.

As Kolding searches for the source of the chaos in the north, he uncovers a darker secret which will not only bind the fates of Kolding and Ulyana together, but also threaten to shatter the tenuous peace between the superpowers of the Arctic Circle.

So much has been pulled apart and refined, but the fundamental pitch to myself hasn’t really changed in five years. The story is still set in the Arctic, and our characters are still from the Danish Kingdom and the People’s Federation. In other words, the blurb – as crude as I feel it is looking back – was robust enough to survive a draft, a rewrite of half of it, and a further rewrite of a third of that.

There’s also another good reason to write the blurb before you’ve started (in the knowledge it will change): you never know when you’ll be asked to talk about what you’re writing now, whether you’re an unpublished writer or you’re on your fourth book. Right now, I’m tweaking the third iteration of my blurb for novel #2. Like Dark Century, the fundamental story hasn’t changed, but the pitch copy has, in order to accommodate a new setting and new era.

Next time you’re stuck with developing your next story idea, why not grab your favourite books off the shelf and read their blurbs, and then try and come up with a pitch for your own story?

Let me know how you get on •

Many thanks for reading. Jordan Acosta is a British-Filipino speculative writer and creative director based near London.

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The Dispatch is his monthly roundup, published every first Thursday. Subscribe for news, short reviews and more at jordanacosta.co.

2

A pitch is distinct from a synopsis, as a synopsis must reveal the plot (the order of events which make up the story) from beginning to end; a task made improbable when I haven’t figured that bit out yet. Nor is it a log line, which is essentially a one sentence version of the story, e.g., ‘A young man is transported to the past, where he must reunite his parents before he and his future cease to exist.’ (Back to the Future, Bryn Donovan), or this classic listing: ‘Transported to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again.’ (The Wizard of Oz, TCM listing by Rick Polito, 1998). For more on writing a synopsis, I recommend Renee Fountain’s Mastering Your Synopsis: Grinding Your Story Into 800 Words or Less👇

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Mastering the Synopsis: Grinding Your Story into 800 Words or Less

LIVE - FREE MARCH WEBINAR w/Q&A…

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a year ago · 18 likes · 7 comments · Renee Fountain