I find immense pleasure from writing and I want people to read what I’ve written, but I recognise some of the material is dry – but it’s still important. So to make dry content digestible, I always include an attractive photograph.
When using images, make sure have permission – it’s someone’s property and it’s not fair to use someone’s work without properly remunerating them. Believe me lots of people do it with my writing, and the flattery wears thin.
Firstly, if possible I will always turn to my own Google Pixel (I used to own a iPhone) and images I’ve captured go into the app Google Photos. This has amazing search function – so I can search for coffee, and photos of me drinking coffee will come up.
Previously I have a file called blog photos and I’ll store them there. If you are planning to blog, and don’t have a special place for potential blog images – stop and work out where it will be.
I would also like to mention this free site to help you with your colour scheme – a colour palette tool to find the perfect color schemes. You can also upload a photo to identify the colours and colour schemes within the photo. Color.Adobe.com
If you need stock images for your blog, here are seven places you can access them. At the time of writing they were free to use in commercial projects, but make sure you check the terms and conditions:
- All the Free Stock: Images in one location. All of the sites under Free Stock Photos block link images listed under the Creative Commons Zero license, so you are free to use these images in commercial projects. http://allthefreestock.com/
- Death to the stock photo: You’ve got to love that name. Offers to email free photos to your inbox. Mmmm, don’t like having to search for photos in my inbox. http://deathtothestockphoto.com/
- Finda Photo: This site curates 100% free stock images from lots of sites. What I really like is that you can search by key word colour, hex colour, collection, source. When you select an image you want, it shares the site of origin, dimensions, aspect ratio and artist. Save yourself time and bookmark this site for all blog images you need.
The stock image collection sites include images from the following site;
- PikWizard https://pikwizard.com/
- Barn Images http://barnimages.com/
- Free Nature stock http://freenaturestock.com/
- Jay Mantri http://jaymantri.com/
- Life of Pix http://www.lifeofpix.com/
- MMT http://mmt.li/
- Picography http://picography.co/
- Realistic Shots http://realisticshots.com/
- SkitterPhoto http://skitterphoto.com/
- Start Up Stock Photos http://startupstockphotos.com/
- Unsplash https://unsplash.com/
Site: http://finda.photo/
- Gratisography is a collection of quirky stylised images. I’d definitely take a look if you want a left of centre look to your images http://www.gratisography.com/
- Pexels has a wide arrange of crisp and interesting stock images. http://www.pexels.com/
- StockSnap Lots of images, that can be searched, and sorted by date, trending, views, downloads and favourites. https://stocksnap.io/
- StreetWill describes itself as a site of free vintage photos to use any way you want. http://streetwill.co/