Our lives are surrounded by images, some moving, some others still: television, billboards, bus stops, and trains are full of ads that are mostly images. A picture is worth a thousand words, they say, and blogs make no difference.

That’s because the little idiom above is true: when we see a picture, thousands of words, feelings, and emotions flood our senses.

Adding images to your blogs and articles is critical if you want to grab your reader’s attention and stay there long enough to engage in meaningful dialogue with them.

However, you will not be able to take pictures from the internet and use them on your blogs unless you want the copyright police to give you a break. All images are the property of their creator unless the rights to the image are specifically granted to another person.

If you want (and should) use photos in your articles,

you have 3 options:

• Use images that are not protected by copyright, e.g., those of your images you employ a camera or a phone to capture
• Use the copyrighted or non-copyrighted (royalty-free) type of images
• Use images for which you are paying a license. In these cases, you do not own the copyright, but the copyright owner grants you a license for a particular use.

1. You Want To Own Your Images

It’s fun to take pictures, and now it’s easier than ever to take pictures employing a camera or smartphone.

The benefit of creating your images is that you are the copyright owner and can configure exactly what you want to photograph to make your blog perfect. I’m also always looking for interesting pictures or photo opportunities that I think I can use at a later date.

Examples of things that you can generate yourself are:

• Pictures from your very own camera
• Graphics you create on your computer using your software or web software such as Canva.com.
• Screenshots from your computer: These are usually used in training videos and similar things to show you how to do something.
• Banners or ads to use on websites

2. The Best Royalty Free Stock Photos For Commercial Use

The images without copyright are just that: free images that you can use for the purpose you want. Peoples will take photos or create graphics and upload them to royalty-free websites, renouncing their copyrights and allowing others to use the images.

In some cases, you can use the images for free if you give attribution (or credit) to the copyright owner so you may need to add a title to the image to indicate who the copyright owner is or where you got the image from.

#ethics #fashion #food #web-development #coding