REBLOG OF PATRICIA KENNEDY: "Taking" Photos for Your Posts
This week, Judi Barrett wrote two posts about some terrific sites where you can find photos for your blog posts. These sites have free photos that you can use for commercial purposes, and some don't even require that you give the photographer credit. And many of them are really amazingly great.
And it got me to thinking.
I invested in a set of discs with clip art and photos, and while I use a lot of the clip art, I almost never use their photos.
First, I enjoy photography and love to take my own pictures for my blogs. Still, I think that commercial photos have a place if you are using them to illustrate a point you are trying to make in a post.
But lately, I've been noticing some awfully great shots in some of the weekly photo blogging posts, like Wordless Wednesday, Friday Fotos or Speechless Sunday, and here I think the use of photos that are not original is inappropriate.
There are some wonderful photographers here on Active Rain, and when they post their own shots there's no doubt about who took them. And there are a lot of great posts about how to improve out photo skills.
Like many of you, I've learned a lot about photography from taking shots for my blog - both shooting the pictures and editing them. And I guess that's the point of photo blogging. I always have a camera with me, even if it's just the one on my I-Phone.
So while these sites have wonderful photos, I think I'm going to go with my own, perhaps less wonderful, photos. Using someone else's photos is almost like using someone else's words - even if they give you permission.
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