Im in web publishing and looking for a source of inexpensive news
photos. I noticed that The Drudge Report (drudgereport.com) always
uses photo from the same source, but I dont recognize it.  I only know
the source URL of the photo service.  I figured that much out by
right-clicking on the news photos. But when I paste in the "root"
domain it doesnt tell me much about who (what news wire service) is
providing the photo.  Below I will paste in a photo URL that I got
from right-clicking on today's (2/27) lead headline photo on
drudgereport.com. Here it is:
http://us.news2.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/p/afp/20050226/capt.sge.obz80.260205165455.photo00.photo.default-275x371.jpg

Can someone determine what news wire provides these photos, and point
me to a webpage that details the cost (if there is any) to subscribing
to this news photo service?  Thanks.

Dear steve68,

The answer to your question may be a bit disappointing, I'm afraid.
Please let me explain:

I analyzed the URL and did various web searches with its components.
The result is that the photo (like the others on the Drudge Report
site with similar URLs) are taken direct from the various sections of
the US version of the Yahoo News site: http://news.yahoo.com/

The root URL yimg.com is, as a whois search (http://www.allwhois.com/)
revealed, property of Yahoo. Obviously, the yimg.com URLs are only
used for images used by yahoo (the Yahoo logo, for example, is also
stored in another directory under the yimg.com URL).

My analysis of the URL revealed that the characters behind the "/p/" -
in this particular case, afp - denotes what news agency provided the
photograph. "afp" stands for AFP, Agence France Press
(http://www.afp.com/). Some other news agency codes I have found in
Yahoo's yimg.com image URLs are:

ap - Associated Press - http://www.ap.org/
cpress - Canadian Press - http://www.www.cp.org/
rids - Reuters - http://www.reuters.com/
eo - E! Online - http://www.eonline.com/

So there is no single news photo service behind those URLs; they are
only the addresses of images used by Yahoo News, provided by numerous
news agencies.

If you desire to use images provided by Yahoo News under one of their
yimg.com URLs, please note Yahoo's advice on this:
"The images you find in your Yahoo! News Photos Search results may be
protected by copyright. Yahoo! doesn't own or control these images, so
we can't grant you the rights to use them in any way other than
viewing them on the Web. If you'd like to use any of the images you
find through Photos Search, we advise you to contact the referenced
provider/owner for permission."

This contact list of news agencies used by Yahoo News should help in
case you'd like to inquire for permission:
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/news/news-03.html

Though I had to bring you bad news, I nevertheless hope that this
information will be useful for you.
Best regards,
Scriptor

Thanks Scriptor. That was nevertheless very helpful.