How to find photographs to illustrate your blog posts
People love photographs and the best blogs should always be illustrated... but sourcing the right photographs for your blog is far from simple.
Every post we publish on this blog needs a picture – no mean feat and sourcing the right photograph can sometimes take longer than writing the actual post! So knowing how we will illustrate a post can actually be the starting point for an article.
Obviously copyright should be foremost in your mind and never simply steal images. Some of the big stock photographic libraries, like Getty, have a reputation for being very litigious over websites that steal their images.
One of our favourite sources is a terrific free photo website called Stock Xchange which I often peruse simply looking for a photograph that triggers a line of thought the will lead to a post. Consequently I have a folder that is chock full of such inspirational images and can easily be dipped into on a slow day.
We recommend renaming the photographs that inspire you specifically with the title or topic of the blog post and keeping these in their own folder. This is the fast track for ideas and you’ll be surprised of the ideas you had forgotten you had when you first saw these photos!
Stock Xchange has a search limited by a relatively small archive and some creative tagging of those images which can be frustrating – but at the same time makes for some creative choices too. They do helpfully show paid alternatives from Istock, which does have a amazing selection.
A bonus source of photographs comes from my monthly subscription to Photoshop Creative. Each edition comes with a free CD that normally has an interesting selection of photographs and these too I archive for future inspiration. They also tend to come from different stock photographic libraries which can introduce you to new sources.
Flickr is also a good place to find photographs and be sure to limit your search to those tagged with a Creative Commons license which means they can be used, normally with a credit. I will normally email the photographer to say I have used it and give them the link to find where.
Finally, if you are at an event and there is a professional photographer there, do think about asking for an image or two in return for mentioning them and linking back to their website. Most will happily oblige and may even ask what kind of image you need – so do think about this before you ask! Also, know whether you want a landscape or portrait photograph – that is the orientation of the image. For example we use a 600x200 pixel letter box size on our blog, so any image needs to fit that.
If you are planning a specific series of blog posts you could always commission a photographer to provide specific images. It will be cheaper than you might imagine!
Happy hunting for photographs and do tell us in the comments if you know of any great sources for free stock photographs.
This is part of our Blogging Best Practice Series.