Photos in Blogs

As I get ready to start my own blog, I've been reading tons of others to see all the different ways people have done theirs. And one general pattern is, you need an image of something in most every post. And I want to be able to do that as much as possible. But my question is... are images on the internet generally free to post in a blog? Are there "rules" about what is acceptable to post or not? Is giving credit like "Photo courtesy of John Doe" enough of a way to cover your ass if you aren't sure? Any advice about this would be appreciated.

And where is the best place to store personal photos you want to include? I know about Photobucket. Is that the best site like that, or are there others to look into?

Thanks!

The short answer for your question:are images on the internet generally free to post in a blog?; is no but many people believe so/don't give a hoot they just rightclicky.

The slightly longer version:

Let me ask you this, If joe blow blogger comes along to xondemand and lifts some photos or a neat animation or whatever from your site and posts it to his blog but isn't an affiliate/hasn't asked permission what are you guys going to do?

I'm a little uptight about this type of thing cuz I'm always seeing my stuff scraped up onto all sorts of sites.

One could say that there seems to be leinency if you're not trying to make a buck of said blog or site.

For uploading and storing photos there's also http://www.flickr.com/ -- haven't looked to deeply into it though.

Here's what I do.

If I'm taking a picture from a sponsors site for a porn blog, I don't ask. I just make sure I'm sending them traffic.

If I take pictures from a non-porn site, then I usually let them know that I blogged them and I always make sure that I credit the site with a link. I figure if they don't like it, they'll ask me to remove it. And to date, everyone's been just thrilled that you're talking about them.

If you want to be extra safe, you can watermark the picture with the site name.

Technically speaking, it's still wrong to take them without asking permission. But if you're respectful, you shouldn't run into too many problems. If you're passing them off as your own or without credit, you'll definitely get into problems.

Michael

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Dzinerbear

Here's what I do.

If I'm taking a picture from a sponsors site for a porn blog, I don't ask. I just make sure I'm sending them traffic.

If I take pictures from a non-porn site, then I usually let them know that I blogged them and I always make sure that I credit the site with a link. I figure if they don't like it, they'll ask me to remove it. And to date, everyone's been just thrilled that you're talking about them.

If you want to be extra safe, you can watermark the picture with the site name.

Technically speaking, it's still wrong to take them without asking permission. But if you're respectful, you shouldn't run into too many problems. If you're passing them off as your own or without credit, you'll definitely get into problems.

Michael

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Yep politness goes a long way. :) LOL so many variables.

Thanks both of you. I would never take an image without giving them credit, so I don't expect to have too many problems I hope. I know what you mean about other people taking your content and how that makes you feel. I imagine if you are doing it from others, you have to expect others are doing it to you and it sort of evens out in the end. As long as credit is given like you said.

A really good place to go for images is Google, then select "Images" and type in the key words of the image you are looking for. That's how I find a lot of the images that I use.

I think the question that begs to be asked is: what kind of blog is it and what type of pictures are you anticipating you'd want to be using?

If it's a site about where you went on your vacation, and the pics you took turned out like shit, or you need plates of food to illustrate a site on cooking - you might consider getting something like Hemera's "The Big Box of Art", or a similiar product, that has thousands of images, clipart, etc that are royalty free to use on web pages, in print publications, etc.

You can usually find several products like that at a computer center that carries a good selection of software. Or even check www.microcenter.com and order one online.

You could also use a stock photography site like Fotolio ... can get pics for a $1.