I’ve been trying to buy an image from Getty Images for the last few days and it’s been a harrowing experience. I’ve spent at least 2 hours trying to login to the system on Firefox. My relief was short lived when I eventually moved over to Safari: it appears that South Africa is not on the list of countries that I can choose in order to get a %$@ price.
This is my first experience using (or at least trying to use) rights-managed photos – and I can honestly say that I’d rather scour Fickr for Creative Commons-licensed images instead of frustratingly trying to get this system to work for me. It appears that Getty is very good at taking pictures of us in South Africa, but not very good at offering us a service to actually buy those photographs.
Hblog.org 
Hi Heather – I feel your pain — although I’d like to recommend you try istockphoto.com. Although it’s now owned by Getty, I’ve never had a problem getting what I want. (Ha! If only I could say that about the rest of my life…)
Thanks so much, Anne. I’ve since tried out istockphoto.com and it’s much easier administratively but the pics are just not as good 😦
What about the pictures hosted in Picasa web? Are they public? I’m sure you can find a lot of pics that would be useful there… though it will definitely take time for you to choose good ones…
But good luck with it!
Regards from Argentina (just across the atlantic lol)
Melisa
Hi Heather
As someone in the Internet industry, I make regular use of these excellent (free and legal) stock resources:
http://www.sxc.hu/index.phtml
http://everystockphoto.com/
http://www.morguefile.com/
The following site charges a comparatively tiny (tiny!) fee per image, so also worth checking out:
http://www.stockxpert.com/
Happy hunting.