In light of recent articles about the main stream media not wanting to play nice with blogs it seems like a good time to make your own blog more self relient.
Using photo’s in your blog can be a great way to make it stand out, grab your readers attention and convey a message that just can’t be spelled out.
Unfortunately it can be difficult to find photo’s that you can use legally. You can’t just go grabbing any photo you find off the Web, this can be a good way to get yourself sued if the photo is copyrighted.
Flickr’s Creative Commons is a great way to find photo’s that you can use for free, usually you just need to acknowledge the author, with a link back to the original.
Where things get tricky with Creative Commons is 
that you usually can’t use the photo for commercial gain. But what if you sell ads on the site or even just have an Amazon affiliate widget on the site? Can that be considered commercial? I haven’t heard of anyone getting in trouble yet but in the litigious society we live in, why risk it?
You can of course pay for services that give you the right to use professional photo’s, but most of us have no intention for paying for anything besides hosting (many don’t even do that).
I’ve found that by constantly snapping photo’s and posting them up on Flickr I’ve begun building my own personal photo gallery.
While snapping my own photo’s may not have the 
level of professionalism that some blogs have, I think they add a level of personality to the site.
So your homework assignment is to start snapping photo’s.
I use to carry around a small digital camera everywhere I went until I got a camera phone. I’ve also found that by setting up my Flickr account to receive MMS’s from my phone not only am I more likely to take photo’s I’m more likely to upload them.
Don’t think about taking the perfect blog picture, instead think about taking as many photo’s as you can.
You never know when that random photo you took will be just perfect for your next blog post. Or more likely you’ll never know which of your photos will kind of work for your next blog post.
And if it’s an interesting photo and has some of your personality in it then most likely your readers will appreciate it more than some obviously stock photo.
Technorati Tags: photo. pictures, flickr, mobile, blogging, tips, homework
Print this post
Hhhm… I was actually expecting to see a separate photo gallery set-up! At any rate - this is good advice to anybody. I only use my “nice” camera when I have to get a good quality image for a client. I really prefer trying to get my own shot before purchasing an image. Of course everyone has a camera phone now and makes taking everyday life photos so much easier!
This is a good homework assignment, Tac. I’m looking forward to seeing more Flickr photos from friends!
I’m effectively camera-less at the moment (the family camera accidentally got busted on a recent backpacking trip, and I wouldn’t inflict the awful pics from my phone on anyone) but I’m digging the Photo Dropper plugin for WordPress.
It has a “Show only photos that can be used commercially” setting that deals with the Creative Commons question you raised—I use it just to be safe. But it’s also handy to be able to search and embed all from the post editor screen.
Hopefully will be replacing the camera within the next week or so, though!
Sorry to disappoint Dave. I’m not cool enough to hang with design guys so the closest I have to an actual gallery is my flickr page
Sarah, you’d be surprised what you can do with a camera phone, especially for a blog.
That is a cool plugin. I’ve also really been digging the Zemanta plugin (I’m using the browser plugin currently) and it even suggests photo’s for you based on keywords.
hehe that’s okay! Flickr is what I’m using too! Why spend the time to put together a gallery when Flickr has everything right there? Not to mention being able to run it through something like friendfeed. Now that’s cool!
Sarah’s plugin advice sounds like somethign to check out too…..
I was hoping to see a review of some great wordpress plugins for image galleries. There are some awesome ones that pull you flickr photos (or those from other feeds) right through, and are completely customizable.
I liked your post, and think it is great advice in regard to a personal blog/life stream environment, but have to disagree completely in regard to using your camera phone pics as content on a professional blog.
If it’s not professional, it shows. I would never recommend a client use their low-quality camera phone pics as content on their professional blog unless it related to their business. Even then, I’d recommend they upgrade their phones to something with at leat 5-10MP. iPhones take very low-quality pictures.
Nothing looks better on a professional blog than photos from a trained, experienced photographer.
Josh,
That’s just what professional copywriters and journalist have been saying about blogging.
I agree that there are times where professional content is the best choice. But I will always argue (as I have for the last 4 years) that personal content, especially when it’s imperfect, is more engaging to your customer.