Flickr

Flickr, Yahoo’s free photo-sharing site, is a wonderful resource for puppet designers, sculptors, artists and illustrators. I used to use Google’s image search when looking for reference photos and inspirational images, but now I almost exclusively use Flickr.

Because it acts as a repository of people’s personal photographs, Flickr has an almost limitless selection and a mind-boggling variety of subjects. If you can think of it, someone’s probably taken a picture of it.

There are several different photo-search options, including most relevant, most recent or most interesting. Each option will yield different results. Fickr’s images are uploaded by members and are generally larger than most Google images, plus the resolution is better and it’s easy to download various photo sizes. Many of the Flickr photos are of professional quality, so it’s like having a library of free stock images at your fingertips.