Our thanks to editor Michelle Hutchinson of Wordhelper for this guest post.
As writers, we’re all about words. But we shouldn’t forget that photos can help draw readers in.
This is especially true for blog posts. If you want your target market to read your book, you first have to establish yourself as an expert in your field and build an audience for yourself. Blogging is one of the best ways to accomplish these goals.
The human eye tracks differently on a computer screen than on hard copy, so not only do you need white space to break up each blog post’s content, you need a relevant introductory image to create interest.
In addition, an image tricks the reader into thinking the on-screen opening lines he’s reading are shorter than they really are. Just take a look at the photo I chose for this blog post. If I didn’t have the camera to the right of the opening text, my sentences would have spanned the entire width of the screen. The human eye isn’t always comfortable tracking that way at the beginning of an online article.
Notice also how the camera in this post’s photo is pointing toward the text, directing your eyes to the words. Whenever possible, try to find an image whose line of sight makes your readers look at your content. Had I chosen a photo in which the camera faced in the opposite direction or had placed this photo to the left of my text instead of the right, it would not have created the same effect.
Where to Find Images
So, now that you know the importance of adding images to your blog posts, how do you find them without paying for them? And how do you find good ones? Sure, you could take your own photos, but what if you’re not an ace photographer? Fortunately, there are several online sources for free photos.
Wikimedia Commons is a great place to start because many copyright holders have uploaded their photos to that site and released their work into the public domain without any conditions. In fact, that’s where I got the photo that accompanies this blog post.
I simply typed “camera” in the website’s search box, and this was one of the images that came up. Yes, I did have to look at a few before I found one that had been released into the public domain, but many people who upload their photos to Wikimedia Commons will still allow you to use them as long as you attribute the image to the photographer. When I use images like those, I put the attribution in a caption below the photo.
As a writer, you wouldn’t like it if someone else passed off your copyrighted words as their own, would you? So make sure you give credit where credit is due. If an image has certain rights reserved, you must abide by its conditions of use.
Flickr.com’s Creative Commons website is another great source for free photos. To avoid coming up with images that have all rights reserved, use Flickr’s advanced search. After you enter or choose your search parameters, scroll down to the last section of the screen, the one labeled Creative Commons, and make sure you check all three boxes that appear there, the ones that read:
- Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content.
- Find content to use commercially.
- Find content to modify, adapt, or build upon.
Then click on “Search.” Many of the images will have some rights reserved, but those rights often just require giving attribution to the photographer.
MorgueFile and Stock.xchng are two more good websites. One caveat on Stock.xchang: the premium photos (the ones people pay for) will come up at the top of the screen, but you’ll find many excellent free photos below those. On both sites, read the usage conditions associated with the image you choose. If attribution is required, include it. It’s the right thing to do.
Readers, what websites do you search to find free, usable photos? What other tips do you have about the placement of images in your blog posts?
Dr. Michelle Hutchinson is the founder of Wordhelper: Editing, Writing, Resumes & More and the editor for Willow Bend Publishing. She has contributed to Feathered Quill Book Reviews, Smart Ideas magazine, and many other publications. Her clients include Brad Fortier, whose book, Dear Kate, was a Washington Post Color of Money Book Club selection, and Ellen Feld, award-winning author of the Morgan horse series for young adults. You can find Michelle on Twitter as @wordhelper, on Facebook, and on LinkedIn. She always welcomes questions. To contact her, click here.
This site works too for finding good photos
http://www.coolapic.com/
just make sure link back
hi,
you have written a good article . i myself use flickr for photos for the first time yesterday and i don’t know if i wrote the attribution rightly ..can you just check if it’s fine..at http://www.myeurojourney.com/sea-kayaking-holidays
another question is when you are writing as a blogger should you pay attention to keyword research or just pay attention to the quality of your blog post ???? .i am confused
Hi David – yes, sort of! The photo does link back to Flickr but as a courtesy you might also have the attribution link back there too to http://www.flickr.com/photos/93636091@N00/195033936/ – Make sense? And quality of your post must always come first, but after you write the post you may want to look it over for keywords and perhaps match them to more often searched words/strings. Example: You’re writing about dogs and shows and then search keywords and find that “dog show breed” comes up as a top search – is there a way to incorporate that into the text and stay true to the post? Artists want it one way; marketers another – but you can be marketing savvy and still write what you want to write 🙂
thanks that was a help ..i have just started blogging and it was my 4th article and well i have more to learn. thanks for your response.
Happy to help, David and all success to you!
David, Shari’s response is right on the money. Just be careful about overusing key words and phrases or forcing them where they don’t sound natural. That used to be a good way to game the system and rank higher in the search engines, but no more. Now the search engine algorithms have been tweaked to detect that sort of writing. If you do that, you’re said to be engaging in SEO spam, and the search engines will actually ding you in the rankings for that.
There is another great free photo collection site:
http://stockphotogram.com/
You should check it out!
Thank you for that suggestion, Suzana.
I like this post, Photos add a great deal to a post, and also this looks super easy! Thanks for sharing!
Thank you, Dave. It is easy.
I’ve used your first two suggestions often. Now I want to try the last two.
For non-commercial work, I like http://etc.usf.edu/clippix/ and its two related sites. And if you want animals, I like http://animalphotos.info/a/.
Thank you, Rebecca – we’ll check ’em out!
It is good I have found you Dr.
Thank you for finding time to educate me on this.
I am still an armature in writing classic and client winning blogs,yet I feet I have the ability to do so.
One of the scenario is that English is foreign to me,yet it is a universal language that our colonizers left with us.However,that is not a strong reason to declare my weakness,it is more than that.
I am interested in taking pictures my self as I travel and attending events as well.
I do not have a camera at the moment but I recently started on saving venture to buy a camera
Down loading photos from the sites you have shown me to accompany my blog will go a long way in partly solving my problems.
Thank you Dr M
You’re quite welcome, Kigozi (or is it Alex?). A good camera can be an expensive purchase, so I’m glad these sites will help you until you’ve saved enough money to buy the equipment you want.
Great info…bookmarked a bunch of these. I use two images for each of my blogs, and I blog weekly so this is great to know.
I’m glad this helped you, Jacqueline.
Bloggers should familiarize themselves with the terms of various licenses:
http://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
Yep, Lauren! I provided that first link in the blog post. Thanks for providing the second one.
The WWW team has been enjoying http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/ – They’re reliable, clear about their terms and how to credit them and offer easy search and a wide selection.
Thanks for that suggestion. I just checked out the site and added it to my list.