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Image Credits

All food photography on PairingPlates consists of real, licensed photographs — no AI-generated imagery is used. Photos are sourced from Wikimedia Commons under Creative Commons licenses (CC0, CC BY, CC BY-SA), each attributed below and in the caption where it appears.

How photography is sourced and credited

Every photo on this site is a real photograph of real food, shot by a named photographer. We do not publish AI-generated images of food, people, or animals anywhere on the site; if we ever add a diagram or chart, it is labelled as an illustration. Images are downloaded at the width our layout needs and stored on our own asset directory, so no page hotlinks someone else's server.

Sourcing is licence-first, not looks-first. A candidate has to survive a licence filter before it is judged on composition, which is why a few beautiful photos never make it onto the site: a licence that forbids commercial use cannot sit next to advertising, and a licence that forbids adapted material rules out the cropped, re-framed treatments our layout depends on. The table below is the filter we apply.

Licence class	Commercial use	Cropping & re-framing	What the credit line must carry
CC0 / public domain	Allowed	Allowed	Nothing required by the licence — we credit the photographer anyway
CC BY (2.0 – 4.0)	Allowed	Allowed	Credit the creator, link the licence, indicate that changes were made
CC BY-SA (3.0 / 4.0)	Allowed	Allowed	Same as CC BY, and any adaptation carries the same licence
CC BY-NC (any version)	Not allowed	Varies	Not used — advertising makes this site a commercial use
CC BY-ND (any version)	Allowed	Not allowed	Not used — every image is cropped to fit the page layout

What each credit line contains

Every credit in the log below carries three things, in the order the licence expects them:

The work title exactly as it is published on Wikimedia Commons, so the original file can be found from our page.
The creator's name as they publish it, including a location when they use one as part of their credit.
The licence short name, linked to the licence deed — for example CC BY-SA 4.0 pointing at the share-alike deed, so a reader can check the terms without searching.

Where we have resized or cropped an image to fit the layout, that counts as a change under CC BY and CC BY-SA and is noted in the caption. The captions run directly under the photograph on the page it appears on; this log is the site-wide summary. You can see the pattern in practice on the cheese board guide and on each of the tools.

If a credit is wrong, incomplete, or you are the photographer and would like the treatment changed, tell us through the About page — we correct attribution errors the same week we hear about them, and we will remove a photo on request rather than argue about it.

Sources: Creative Commons licence deeds for CC0, CC BY 4.0 and CC BY-SA 4.0; Wikimedia Commons' own guidance on reusing content outside Wikimedia. Verified against the licence deeds on 2026-10-16.

Attribution log

Charcuterie board - Massachusetts.jpg	Daderot	CC0
Cheese platter, french style (42231088730).jpg	Ella Olsson from Stockholm, Sweden	CC BY 2.0
Baked Camembert with truffle oil, honey & toast - Long Man Inn 2024-12-18.jpg	Andy Li	CC0
Meat platter starter at the White Hart Inn, Moreton, Essex, England.jpg	Acabashi	CC BY-SA 4.0
Prosciutto con melone IMGP0936.jpg	Nikodem Nijaki	CC BY-SA 3.0
Cowgirl Creamery Point Reyes - Red Hawk cheese.jpg	Frank Schulenburg	CC BY-SA 4.0
Grapes Kiwi and Cheese being served.jpg	Pål Berge from Bryne, Norway	CC BY 2.0