As a freelance illustrator I often use reference photos for my work. Not to copy or trace but to study in order to help me understand the subject matter as I draw. My friend and fellow illustrator Tom Richmond recently wrote
a good post on the proper role of reference photos when creating a piece of art. He compares it to a writer using a thesaurus, and warns against relying too heavily on reference imagery so that it becomes a crutch.
When I was in art school the internet was brand new and there was no such thing as Google, much less
Google Image Search. Back then we were taught to scrounge old magazines from friends, relatives, and recycling centers so that we could pour through them and rip out photos of anything and everything we thought we might be asked to draw someday. We were taught to organize them into what was called a "swipe file" or a "morgue". Over a period of several years I eventually filled two-and-a-half filing cabinets with photos.
Google has made much of my "morgue" irrelevant, but not all of it.
