The best to way find images and videos that you know you can use without worrying about violating copyrights, is to find material with Creative Commons licenses. Creative Commons (CC) is a non-profit organization that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools. CC licenses allow creators to customize their sharing experience, there are several types of CC licenses with varying degrees of freedom for use.

Go to CreativeCommons.org to find CC licensed material. Scroll down to 'find CC material', type in your search word, then when you get to the CC search page, pick a place to search. The Flickr site has the largest number of photos to choose from.

Once you find an image you want to use, make sure you attribute it properly after copying and pasting into your site. See the Best Practices for Attribution page. Below is an example. Note that when you click on the photo title "creative commons" it takes you right to the flickr page where I copied it from. If you click on the name, it takes you to the creators website, and if you click on the license, you get the licensing details. You will have to create these links yourself, it isn't automatic.

Creative Commons by Kristina Alexanderson is licensed under CC BY 2.0

You can also learn how to license your own work. This includes any photos you may have taken, but also your wordpress site itself. See the example CC license on our course home blog. (If you are an artist or musician, you might want to read more deeply about how to do this and get your work CC licensed and shared. Let me know if you need some help).