Find Free Images For Your Blog Posts
March 5, 2009
Flickr photo by PunkJr
They say a picture is worth a thousand words. I am a visual person, and I put a great deal of thought into selecting images that enhance the messages of my blog posts.
While I depend on iStockphoto for finding professional, affordable stock photographs for a site’s main web pages, I’m much more reluctant to shell out a couple dollars every time I want to add an image to a blog post.
If you are a prolific blogger, the photo tab could add up quickly!
Reclaiming The Creative Commons
Flickr photo by Jayel Aheram
Fortunately, there are lots of artists on the web who don’t mind if you use their images for free – as long as you give them credit for it.
I frequently shop for free images on Flickr, where an advanced search will display all photos available under what’s called a Creative Commons license.
Under this licensing system, any Flickr member who posts their photos can give others permission to share, and in some cases adapt, their work as long as it is attributed it to the creator.
You can read more about Creative Commons here.
How To Find Creative Commons Images On Flickr
Step One: In the search box at the top right corner of the Flickr page, enter one ore more descriptive word(s). For the photo at the top of this email, I entered “picture thousand words.” You’ll be taken to a page that displays all results for all photos with those words in the tags.
Step Two: To the right of the blue SEARCH button at the top of that page, click on Advanced Search, scroll to the bottom of the page, and click the box that says “Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content”. If you are using the photo for your business blog, you should also check the box for “Find content to use commercially.”
Now hit the SEARCH button again, and you will be shown photos that are licensed for free download and use. For this blog post, I selected the “A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words” shot by PunkJr.
How To Provide Proper Attribution
Under he terms of the Creative Commons license for this photo, I am allowed to copy, distribute and display his copyrighted work, but only if I give him credit.
After uploading the image to WordPress, you will see a box like this. For proper Creative Commons attribution, there are two fields that you want to be sure to fill out: Caption and Link URL.
In the Caption, write “Flickr photo by” and add the name that appears on their Flickr account, in this case PunkJr.
In the Link URL field, enter the address that links to that Creative Commons license for that image.
To locate the license URL, go to the bottom of the Available Sizes screen, where there is a button that says “some rights reserved.” Clicking on that link will take you to the Creative Commons license for that image, and you can copy the URL at the top of the screen.
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