A Blogger’s Dilemma – Finding Images to Use On Your Blog
The other evening my friend Andrea Chin and I spent a good part of our 2 hour phone call discussing how “iffy” and time-consuming it is finding royalty-free images to use in a blog post.
Almost as if the Twitter gods were smiling down on me, within 5 minutes of finishing our telephone call Michel Fortin sent a tweet that directed me to Seth Simonds’ article, “How I Discover & Use Images On My Blog”.
In his article Seth reveals that he uses Flickr to find his images. However; as he himself puts it…
“Unfortunately, Flickr’s search function is ungainly.”
He then goes on to introduce his readers to a free site called Compfight, that enables users to search Flickr images based on tags, content and license, and describes in helpful detail and with several screen shots how to use Compfight.
I must say though that I had to agree with Danny Brown’s comment …
“That’s a lot of work for the image, Seth – kudos for having the patience”
As I said at the beginning of this post, one of the things Andrea and I were bitc, er, talking about, was how much time can be spent searching for the perfect image to compliment your blog post.
That’s why I was so excited when I finally tracked down a video that I knew I had seen several months ago. In it you’ll see how quick and easy it is to find free, high resolution, digital stock photographs and reference images for corporate or public use at morgueFile
Till Next Time,
P.S. I’ll be posting more helpful videos like this regularly. That’s why I suggest you subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed, or you can receive email updates when new content has been posted.
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Tags: Blogging, free, Graphics, images, royalty free photographs, web 2.0
September 2nd, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Hi Sharon,
I know how it is to look for free images. Sometimes you think you have found the perfect picture & then discover that the owner has marked it as No Use. ARGH!
I also use Flickr & the improved Google image search but, sometimes they are a real pain due to rights. That is when I started compiling a list of free sites with all rights to reuse. We started a thread in our forum & a few other members have added their places to find free images also. You can find the link to that thread under my name here.
I hope it helps you all get that perfect shot to make your article stand out!
September 2nd, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Hi Sheryl,
Thanks so much for the comment and for the link to your list of free image sites.
http://theinternetmarketersguild.com/viewtopic.php?f=16&t=279#p414
That should be enough to keep us in images for a while.
Sharon
September 2nd, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Hi Sharon:
Great Blog post and information ~ as always. Finding FREE images is a very touchy situation and knowing where to go is very helpful. However, one of the instructions given “in the video” bothered me. In fact I watched it twice to make sure I saw it correctly.
COPYING URL
The fellow in the video said to COPY THE URL from where the image was hosted at MorgueFiles or wherever and INSERT “THAT” URL into your Blog. This is NOT a good idea as it WOULD cause what is known as “bandwidth stealing!” Let me explain…
Bandwidth Stealing = When you pull bandwidth from one site to another by “linking DIRECTLY to an image on another web site or Blog” and NOT copying the image to your/our own server.
Each time A Blog or web site is visited and THAT image is live on THE site “it is PULLING BANDWIDTH from the other site” as the image is hosted on the other site and not ours.
Bandwidth Stealing is a VERY serious offense if detected. Web sites can be closed down if reported directly to the site’s host and the host is not one of the nice guys who will contact you and give you the benefit of the doubt (that you did not know what you were doing).
ON THE OTHER HAND… Some will not even contact the host, but CHANGE THE IMAGE putting in something like “this image is stolen.” Anyone who is DIRECTLY linking to that image will have this message on their web site. (can be embarrassing)
PROPER CODING/PROCEDURE FOR INSERTING IMAGES on OUR sites
COPY the image to YOUR web site and THEN link to THAT URL. It’s as simple as that. This way each time the page is active and the image is live ~ it is pulling from YOUR/OUR own sites.
Since it is in the instructional video I felt I should address it here as it is giving incorrect information – I am sure by accident as the video creator surely is observing copyright from his instructions.
As an aside: As a digital artist this is a pet peeve of mine as well!
Roz Fruchtman
September 2nd, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Sharon I tried to explain on Twitter, but I could not in 140 characters. That is why the long entry above. Hope it will be helpful to others.
Roz Fruchtman
September 2nd, 2009 at 3:44 pm
[...] this page was mentioned by Jan Tallent (@jantallent), Sharon McPherson (@sharonmcp), Sharon McPherson (@sharonmcp) and others. [...]
September 2nd, 2009 at 3:44 pm
Thanks so much for your comment Roz. I understand your concern about “stealing bandwidth”, and as someone who has been the victim of it, I was one of those people who changed my images to say “I’m stealing bandwidth from http://www.janronpublishing.com“, after repeatedly asking the person who was hot-linking to my images to please stop.
However; this video is giving directions for using images from morgueFile, which actually gives you the link to use so that you may link to their free images.
But, it is very important that one check the licensing requirements when using images from any image sharing website.
Sharon
September 2nd, 2009 at 4:09 pm
LOL Sharon:
That’s very interesting that MorgueFile allows you to link directly to them! I never heard of MorgueFile before I read your post. I’ll have to go take a look!
BROKEN LINKS… On the other hand, it is a good idea to copy to one’s site because IF the other server goes down, your image will appear to be broken (no image). I had that with a signature I created. After the first time I copied the image to my own server and the only time it goes down is if my server goes down.
BTW, did the people who were stealing bandwidth from you ever change the image?
Thanks Sharon… I love that I was able to share. There are those who just don’t know and make these mistakes in good faith.
Roz Fruchtman
September 2nd, 2009 at 4:28 pm
Thanks again for your contribution to this topic Roz. As I said, it is important that one check licensing and attribution requirements when using images from image sharing websites.
And one has to be careful when downloading and hosting an image on their own server also. Without the proper attribution, or a link back to the site that they got the image from, one can run the risk of violating copyrights.
Sharon
P.S. I haven’t checked the site that was hot-linking to my images in over a year, but the last time I looked, yes, they were still using the images that proclaimed themself as a bandwidth thief.
September 2nd, 2009 at 5:08 pm
Hi Sharon:
Since I have never used anyone’s images I’ve never run into any of this. This has been a lesson in sharing and learning for me as well and I hope our banter back and forth is helpful to others.
BTW, I had something worse than someone stealing my bandwidth via an image. I had someone “put THEIR ads (like Google Ads, but NOT Google Ads) on the top of over five of my web sites. It was horrible!
I had to go out and find a script on the web which broke my sites out of THEIR frames cause calling the registrar and trying to contact the person and their host was impossible as they were in the UK and just ignored me. I did get to talk to the REGISTRAR as they are TuCows.com, but they could not seem to help.
Roz Fruchtman
September 2nd, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Thanks for this excellent post adn followign discussion. Really helpful, appreciated the video.
September 2nd, 2009 at 11:50 pm
Thanks for stopping by Lynne. I’m glad you found the information and the comments helpful.
Sharon