How to find great photos for your blog
Photo by SJ Jagadeesh
You could of course do an image search in Google or Bing, but most pictures in the search result will be copyrighted. Plus, it might take you a lot of time to find an image that fits your needs. Here are three alternatives:
1. Make your own photos
Get yourself a small digital camera that you can take with you wherever you go, and start building your own database of photos and pictures. Advantages: it’s a free solution, your pictures are unique and you are the copyright holder.
Do some research on the web on how to take good pictures with simple cameras (following a few basic rules can already dramatically improve the quality of your photos), and start shooting!
Make sure you focus on details and pick one single topic for each photo. A face, an object, a close-up of a butterfly.. Get as close as possible to the subject. Look for nice color combinations, good lighting and interesting patterns.
Create a place on your computer where you store these photos for later use. You can create subfolders or tag your photos so that later, you can easily find photos that match the topic of your blog post.
2. Use Flickr photos with a Creative Commons license
Flickr.com is one of the biggest photo repositories in the world. Many Flickr users have chosen to offer their work under a Creative Commons license, and some of these licenses allow you to use photos on your website or blog, provided you include attribution. You can browse or search through content on Flickr.com under each type of license using the ‘advanced search’ option.
There are a couple of Creative Commons licenses that are interesting for bloggers:
Attribution:
The authors of these photos let others copy, distribute, display, and perform their copyrighted work – and derivative works based upon it – but only if they give them credit.
Noncommercial:
The authors of these photos let others copy, distribute, display, and perform their work – and derivative works based upon it – but for noncommercial purposes only.
No Derivative Works:
The authors of these photos let others copy, distribute, display, and perform only verbatim copies of their work, not derivative works based upon it.
Here is a link to Flickr’s explanation of the various types of CC licenses: http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons
Flickr has more than 22 million photos with a CC attribution license, which means you can use those photos on your blog if you give the author credit. Make sure to read the specific license information that is provided with each picture.
Search Flickr for photos using keywords that match the topic of your article and restrict your search within Creative Commons-licensed content (select either content to use commercially or content to modify, adapt, or build upon). This should give you plenty of great photos you can use on your blog.
3. Use a commercial service
A lot of photographers and artists are selling their work via big commercial image banks like istockphoto.com. These illustrations are actually quite affordable (around $1 for a good photo or illustration), and material you purchase is royalty-free, which means you only have to pay once to use the file multiple times.
An advantage of commercial services is that they offer more than just photos. Sometimes you need good vector art, or a design element for your blog or website. These image banks have millions of illustrations about almost any topic you can think of.
How do you find illustrations and photos for your website or blog? Have any additional tips? Let us know in the comments!
When I was on twitter and clicked to read your article, another twitter friend posted a link to an article on photos used for web. I find it interesting how they can track viewers eyes across the screen, and find out the paths showing what they are mainly interested in. link: http://tiny.cc/z9q9k
I wanted a picture of a clock recently, and kept finding stock photos for sale. I finally resorted to the on-line Sears Catalog, where I found just the perfect clock from their current line.
Great post, Fr. Roderick! My fellow teachers will be interested in this post too. They always have questions on what is fair to use. Here is another place to quickly find Flickr images.
http://www.zoo-m.com/flickr-storm/
For my website and blog, I a majority of the times, I try to use photos that I have taken. Otherwise, if I have not taken a photo then I’ll credit the source where I received the photo with a link back to the source. I have come to know from this journalism course I’m taking called “Essential Multimedia Skills” where we are blogging on a beat to make sure that you have a “photo credit” under each photo–I have done with simply by adding a caption with “Photo Credit: [Source where photo was taken from]”
Keep up the great work, Father. The Catholic Media Guild has been a great source of guidance.
Two other free stock photo sites I like are:
http://www.imageafter.com/
and
http://www.sxc.hu/
Thanks for sharing these tips and sites too. God bless you.
Delali
Great Article
Stock.Xchng is a site where you can find photos under common and royalty free license. http://www.sxc.hu/ This is really just a pointer site for iStockPhoto.
Piece of thought: be careful putting photos on a website you’ve taken yourself, ESPECIALLY photos of minors/kids. Make sure you get permission to publish the photos you take.
It may sound like a no-brainer, but I’ve experienced things going wrong on this front a number of times.
At my day gig (print publication), we spend big $$$ over at istockphoto.com
A few months ago, we started looking at http://www.bigstockphoto.com. The selection isn’t as huge as istockphoto…but it’s A LOT cheaper. Definitely recommend them.
For my own personal blogging stuff though, I try to use creative commons as much as possible.
I have started a website of Catholic photos, photomanipulation and 3D art which can be used without attribution for any appropriate purpose. I will be adding to the site and hope to find other Catholic artists to add theirs also.
Thank you.