Hi everyone, I’m Benj, one of your new writers for BlogTutorials. Even with the preponderance of technology to allow bloggers to take and modify their own photos, there are still individuals (*clears throat*) who are still not well-versed in the subtle art of photography. It’s a good thing that now, people who weren’t born with a feel for the lens have alternatives as sources of embellishment for their blog posts.
Stock photography is the general term for photographs that are readily found in repositories whether in the real world or over the internet. Since the photos are already made, creative control is often lost since the modifications that a client can do is limited to his or her image editing skills. Fortunately, there are literally millions of stock photos in the internet and there are a lot of sites that give them out for free. Those sites who charge for their service often compensate photographers and artists for use of their images.
A considerable number of these stock photography sites have one thing in common – they use hideously large watermarks to label their images. The labels are so huge they obscure the elements of the photograph and worse, they take away a lot of the aesthetic value that the image could bring to your blog post and your site in general. Almost all of the most relevant search results for ‘stock photography’ would feature watermarks so every obsessive-compulsive blogger would be easily turned off from the get-go.
Luckily, there are still stock photography sites that feature images minus the unsightly humongous watermarks. Everystockphoto collates free images from known hosting sites (Flickr, etc.). Each image comes with its own Creative Commons license that lets you know just how much liberty you could take with the image and how you can credit the owner of the image in your post/ site. Details like the original address of the image can also be derived from the particulars provided in the site. To be absolutely sure, you may ask the owner for his or her permission before using the stock image.
Originally posted on May 12, 2007 @ 4:29 pm
