Source and Attribute Creative Commons Photos Like a Pro

Miss Manners will be the first to tell you that when someone gives you a gift, the proper response is a warm, enthusiastic, “thank you!” in writing. Did you know that when you accept the “gift” of a Creative Commons-licensed work such as a photo or illustration for use in your web projects, Miss Manners would endorse that same, warm, enthusiastic “thank you!” in the form of proper sourcing and attribution? Being a good citizen on the web means demonstrating proper behavior, at all events. Today, we’re going to share the wonder that is Creative Commons and your responsibilities for sourcing and attributing any material you may download there.

Widgets 201

In the first post of this series, “Widgets 101,” we introduced some popular widgets, including the Text and Image Widgets, and also mentioned quick ways to transform an image by changing its shape or adding a frame. Since this month is all about photography and phoneography, let’s focus on Image Widgets and explore how to customize them.

Weekly Writing Challenge: Abstraction

No matter how long you’ve been blogging, there is always more to learn. As part of the Weekly Writing Challenges, once a month, we’ll highlight a feature in the WordPress.com Dashboard and challenge you to incorporate it into your blog. We want to help you take full advantage of all the tools available on WordPress.com to make your blog the best it can be — and to make your friends jealous of your web wizardry.

To participate, tag your posts with DPchallenge or leave a link to your post in the comments. Please be sure your post has been specifically written in response to this challenge; obvious attempts to link-bait will be deleted. We’ll keep an eye on the tag and highlight some of our favorites on Freshly Pressed each Friday.

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Since March is phoneography madness month at The Daily Post, this week’s feature-focused writing challenge is about — you guessed it — images! At WordPress.com, we love to help you show off your photography skills, whether it’s through a slick gallery carousel or by easily sharing photos on the go with a mobile app. But did you also know you can edit your images on WordPress.com?

Widgets 101

Earlier this week, Krista talked about ways to get widgety on your blog. You’ll find an assortment of widgets in your dashboard (by going to Appearance » Widgets), waiting patiently for you to activate them! So, now what? Let’s zoom in on several ways to transform your sidebar and enhance your site with different widgets.

A Picture’s Worth

The picture uses the Attribution 2.0 Generic Creative Commons license.

Adding pictures to your posts is a great way to create visual interest and break up text-heavy content, but no one wants to violate copyright laws. So what’s the best way to add photos to your blog posts without stepping on anyone’s toes?

Search by license: Flickr has an excellent Advanced Search tool that allows you to to search within Creative Commons licensed work. (They also have a handy outline of the differences between Creative Commons licenses that can be accessed by clicking on the links below “License” when viewing a photo — so you know how to attribute the creator.) For many of the Creative Commons-licensed images, you can simply click on the Share button at the top of the Flickr page and grab the HTML code to insert into your HTML editor. If Flickr isn’t your thing, Google Images also allows you to filter searches according to usage rights.

Use stock images: While searching images according to license is free — who doesn’t like that? — sometimes the quality isn’t up to par or you can’t quite find what you’re looking for. If you’re open to paying, there are quite a few sites out there dedicated to providing royalty-free stock images, such as iStock Photo, Dreamstime and Getty Images. WP Mods also has a very thorough list of royalty-free resources available here.

Take your own: Okay, saying “Just take your own picture” is overly simplistic, but it’s true. Most of us have a handy digital camera, in addition to cameras on our computers and phones. If you’re writing a longer blog post, you may want to take the time to stage a photo on your own. As with blogging, practicing taking pictures will help you learn more about your artistic style, how to frame your content, and help develop another skill.

If none of the above options are working for you, consider an alternative: visuals aren’t limited to images. You can easily insert videos into your blog from a wide-variety of third-party services, like YouTube and Vimeo. Above all, give back! If you’ve been dying to work on your photoshopping or illustrating skills, upload your images to Flickr and allow people to use your work (attributing you, of course). By sharing your resources, you’re helping to build more than a network of bloggers, but a community as well.

While adding images to your blog can be hard to navigate, with a little persistance, you can easily add an aesthetic touch to your blog and still play fairly.