Images of the classical elements?

[jenett]

So, for a presentation I'm doing not too long after I get back to work (which I'm really excited about and will talk more about in a few days), I want to have images of the four classic elements for one of my slides. (Earth, air, fire, water.)

I've done a bunch of Google-foo, and I am not finding stuff that makes me go "Oooooh" in the ways I want, and I suddenly realised that there may be people out there who have this kind of thing handily bookmarked somewhere.

It's important to me
- that they are creative commons or some other "please use in educational settings" licensing that I can cite at the end of the presentation (because hi, librarian, must model good behavior in these kinds of things.) Cites to person who has given permission are just fine too, obviously. (This is part of why I'm pulling this together now.)

- that they fit together nicely: I'm thinking either four photos (matched in size and color intensity and saturation) or black and white clipart if I can find non-cheesy stuff.

- that they suggest depths and multiple possibilities, ideally. Picture of forest better than picture of single tree, single tree better than single leaf. You get the idea.

- the presentation background is white with a dark blue-paperish header.

The presentation is a teacher talk I'm doing in early September. Teacher talks are a once-a-month chance for faculty at the school I work at to talk about something they normally don't get a chance to talk about much at school. Sometimes it's someone's sabbatical trip, sometimes it's a personal interest, sometimes it's something they've been working on learning and want to share. In my case, I'm going to be talking about how intergrating tools from my religious life into my professional life (and vice versa) makes me a happier, more effective, more creative Jen.

(This is part of my not-so-secret plan to work the library as intentional space that holds and supports specific kinds of use - learning, understanding, inspiration - while not so much being a pure lounge because we have those elsewhere. Easier if I start talking about some of those cues and ideas up front.)

Comments

[eeyorerin]

1) Flickr lets you do a Creative Commons-restricted search.

2) MorgueFile is great for quality images and most of the stuff is CC-licensed or licensed-with-credit for educational use.

[jenett]

I should clarify: I know about Flickr and Google's search limitations for Creative Commons - I'm just still not having a good time finding the kinds of images I've got in my mind's eye.

Which is annoying. Search term issue, more than anything, and figured it was worth asking since I know several people have graphic file collections that rival my text-info collections :)

(Though, huh, just had a duh moment. Shall see if I can find a picture of the Minnehaha Falls that will suit my purposes.)

[eeyorerin]

Ahhh. I apologize for misreading your post. :)

[maewyn]

Maybe something at Graffiti Wallpaper's landscape category? It's stated as free to use as wallpaper; I'm not sure about use in a presentation.

[cjsherwood.livejournal.com]

Would suggest you ping my friend kayre, who is quite an incredible photographer. Tell her I sent you. :-) She'd likely be quite happy to provide relevant stuff for a photo credit given the educational and all. She may not have all four, but she's got some terrific trees and amazing water shots (including many different kinds of waterfalls... but also other water pix, too).

Good luck! It sounds amazing.

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

I was going to suggest the Flicker CC thing too.. hard to work out what images would have the "ooh" factor for someone else, so I had a think about what keywords I'd associate with each to make it more specific & then went a hunting there. I suppose ater could be ocean, or lake, or a single droplet, or a fountain.. I'd probably go waterfall, like this one. And a mountain for earth, with trees on its slopes, I liked this one in China.
Air would be a cloudscape maybe - took a bit to find one i liked till I added bird in and got this one, but its landscape not portrait unlike the others.
Fire I'm not sure, bonfire on a dark night with sparks flying up maybe. I really liked this one.

[matrinka69.livejournal.com]

If you can give me very precise descriptions of what you want to convey, and a few days to do it, I'd be happy to provide you with four photographs (well, I'll probably take 50, but you'll only need the four best).

Shoot me an email. I have a fire pit, access to earth scenes, water scenes, and can probably capture air if we get even a light breeze, or some nice puffy white clouds.

[jenett]

Oh, you are fabulous! I will email.