Loading IMAGES

Newbie & Debugging Questions
#1

So I know how to load images via imageicons and that is working fine but i want to make 1 image and cut the tiles out
and make new images out of them sorta like minecarft did
my image : http://i.imgur.com/hQpUDxH.png?1
anyone ? BTW i have made a image loading class
[spoiler]


package game;

import java.awt.Image;

import javax.swing.ImageIcon;

public class ImageLoader {
	
	public static Image player = loadImage("img/player.png");
	
	public static Image loadImage(String url) {
		Image img = null;
		ImageIcon i = new ImageIcon(url);
		img = i.getImage();
		if (img != null) {
			return img;
		} else {
			System.out.println("ERROR 1");
			return null;
		}

	}
}

[/spoiler]

PLEASE HELP !!!