Most professional bloggers opine that you need good photos if you want a blog that draws attention. Darren Rowse says “any good blogger will tell you that images and imagery are vitally important in the development and rise of any good blog.” But, he also says: “they are often also quite often the most frustrating, annoying and time consuming aspect of any blogs life as well.” That’s true, but it can also be kind of fun finding just the right photo to illustrate a piece of content on your blog.
Say you’re ready to start beautifully illustrating each of your carefully crafted pieces. Where do you go to find these gorgeous images for your publication. Here are a few tricks I have up my sleeve.
FREE STUFF
You know what they say about stuff that’s free. It’s only sort of true when it comes to stock photography. Flickr is the holy grail of free photography, but the catch is you have to restrict your search to the Creative Commons area. That’s simple enough in principle, but you’ll find that Flickr’s interface whisks you right out of the Creative Commons with great ease, so you’ll find yourself looking at the perfect photo, only to check out the fine print and see that it’s a copyrighted image. Frustrating, FYI. So there’s a bit of a trade off on the free stuff. You’ll also want to make sure that you give credit to the source and link back to it.
Another option is to use a Google image search, and set the advanced options under “usage rights.” There are other places to get free pictures as well. The best way to assemble your go-to list is to take note of them when you’re doing other things, then you’ll know you can go back and get a good pic.
PAID OPTIONS
I really like iStock Photo. Since they were acquired by Getty Images a few years ago, the prices have gone up like 200%. However, it is still affordable enough for hobby-type use. The reason I still like them in spite of the price is that it saves me time because a) you can always find the right picture and b) you don’t have to attribute, you own it for purposes of your blog.
Fotolia is the same way. It is cheaper and it used to be that the quality and selection was iffy. However, it’s come along quite a bit and now offers really good quality for around $1 a picture.
Here are some links that are helpful on this issue:
Blogosphere Trends and Choosing Images