Recommendations for photosourcing?

I'm interested in doing some photosourcing for male skins I want to create. I was curious if anyone here could recommend a site with appropriate photographs for this purpose. (Almost everything I'm finding is female.) I don't expect to find them for free, but I would obviously appreciate it if you could recommend something at a reasonable price. I've found a couple of places that offer subscriptions to their sites, but I'm not excited to fork over without knowing for sure whether they have what I need, which is where your recommendation could be helpful.

Also, where does everyone get the images for photosourcing clothing? Are they just googling it and using what they find? Is that legal?

Thanks for your help!

http://3d.sk/

You won't find a better deal on the internet, really. It was about $200 year (they also offer monthly trial memberships, iirc), but worth every cent. Very high resolution photos from every angle, clothed/unclothed, different body types and ages, has a fair number of animals too.

Wouldn't the smart thing to do be to take your own pictures. Invite some friends over for a skin photo session. Meet new people by explaining skins, and asking them to model?

Woo hoo!

Lee, that would be ideal, but I'm afraid I don't own an adequate camera. Even if I did, I might have a hard time finding people with the appropriate body types to photograph in the nude.

Virrginia, I had seen that site, but I wasn't sure if it would be worth the price tag. Your recommendation helps. I'm a poor college student and if I'm going to shell out for a membership, I need that reassurance that it's of a variety and caliber that makes it worth it. Thank you.

Googling photos is chancy at best. It's almost impossible to know who owns the images. I suspect that a high percentage of people who grab them don't give it a thought. The probability of getting caught is very low, but of course that doesn't make it right.

If you take your own photos, you don't have to worry about who owns them, and you have control over camera angles, lighting, exposure, and all the other things that can make photos hard to work with. I agree that it's probably hard to find willing models for photosourcing skins, but you ought to give serious thought to taking your own clothing photos.

Personally, I don't care to photosource at all. Photosourced clothing textures often look too "real world" for my taste. Besides, I like to draw and create my own designs with Photoshop. That's purely a personal preference, but it has the benefit of freeing me from the legal/ethical questions you're raising too.

Getting someone to model for you would, indeed, give you rights to the pictures.......but some sort of model release would probably be necessary too. That would very likely be much more expensive than paying a membership fee for those same rights..........and a lot less legalistic. Unless, of course, you have some exhibitionist friend .

Kidding aside. 3d sk has a very good reputation for quality stock photos. I don't think it would be a waste of your hard earned dollars if you are really interested in skin making. But, I'm with Rolig. It's so much more fun to do it yourself. What I have done is to snatch a good picture (it does not need to be nude) and use that picture to get the skin colors. Then I either discard the picture or save it for next time I want a skin tone that is close to or like the model in the photo. To me, getting the base tone is the hardest...........and that helps a lot by doing it that way.

Thanks for the feedback! I also enjoy doing it myself... That's how I've been doing it. The problem in making male skins is that the market for hand-painted male skins is very small. Most guys want the most photoreal skin available. As to hand-painted clothing, that's how I've done it ever since I started designing for 3D worlds back in early 2007. I just wanted to get some further input from other minds. I really appreciate your thoughts.

I may just use photos for reference without sourcing them, to get base tones as mentioned and to have better placed veins and shadows. It's good to know that 3d sk has such a good reputation.