Looking for HQ Celeb Photos

[CRHain88]

Okay, so let me try to keep this brief.

My goal in life is to work with Celebrites from a design standpoint. Cleaning them up, putting them in magazines, billboards, ad campaigns, what have you. Still in school, looking to practice, need photo resources.

Now to break it down a little bit, I was recently inspired by Britney Spears' new fragrence, Midnight Fantasy. Something calls to me about the silloutte and inner glow of the purfume bottle placed centered on a black verticle canvas. But that's not the real important part, I also like the images with the background, and then Britney with the matching background.

So, I figured that the background was artifical. So somewhere somebody has a picture of her in front of nothingness. I began searching for images like this. Then I found goBritney.com yada yada yada. They have what I'm looking for kinda sorta, there is one post I found with 3MPixel images, which is good enough for what I want to do.

Now, that selection was limited. Some surfing later, I found a site chocked full of images that were 2-5 MB in size. But...I needed to pay 30 bucks for a month's access. So, what I want to know is...

Can somebody reccomend a free site that offers HQ photos of celebrites so that I may practice editing the image for CD Covers, Movie Posters, Magazizne covers and spreads?

[angerisagift]

http://aclasscelebs.com/forum/

[PrintDriver]

You aren't going to find (or you shouldn't be able to find) a high quality image site with Celeb photos. I realize you want to use them for practice, not profit, but Celebs own their own images and it is a violation of Privacy/Rights of Publicity laws to use them, or anyone else's image, without their express written permission - and in the case of celebs, usually a paying a hefty royalty fee. Corbis has a whole pile of recently acquired celeb images (comps are available in low-res), but you can't use them without contacting agents or estates. There shouldn't be a site on-line for free hi-res images. I'm sure there is. Somewhere. But they aren't necessarily legit.

Besides, those photos are probably already retouched. You would do better to show your skills with hi-res digital photos of people you know. Before and After has more effect in a portfolio than After and After.
:D

Oh, and that site mentioned above...depending on the star involved, cease and desist orders do happen. I once saw an actor (from Babylon 5) go through an entire sci-fi convention dealers' room and have security confiscate ALL unauthorized photos and reproductions of actors from Babylon 5. It was within his rights to do so. And it was fun to watch. :D

[Riya]

^ what he said. You will be much better off practicing with photos of yourself and family and friends. Legally, and as far as getting the best practice.

[D-Frag]

What everyone else said. And I too would love to have the job you talk about, unfortunetly landing that position is like winning the lottery. I have some extensive techniques that I use for image retouching, and consider myself good, but def not the best. These things take years to get good at.

To show you that you don't need celebs, this is what I have in my portfolio at the moment...

http://cdn-83.cdn.buzznet.com/assets/users8/dfrag/photomanip/msg-1125311137-2.jpg