One thing I would just like to mention. I’ve just moved this content over from Blogger. On Blogger, there’s not really such a concept as a “featured image”, although I’ve always quite liked the idea of brightening posts up a bit with a graphic. With Blogger, if you use an image, fine, if you don’t, fine, it’s nothing special.
So I’m entering into the spirit of WordPress and am writing posts with a “featured image” attached. One thing I’ve found, is the time it takes to select a suitable image, which can be as long as writing the post itself. The reason? Copyright. Now, I’m no stranger to copyright, I have used it and still use it myself. I’ve published my own photographs and software in the past (and present) so I support the idea of creators having some sort of protection.
There are photo factories, of course. Somebody like Adobe Stock Images. But at a cost. One-off photos are a few tens of GBP/USD – I don’t know if they also offer a subscription. It doesn’t really matter, because I figure I pay WordPress enough for the subscription already. And these pictures are only a bit of fluff, to top off a blog post.
I’ve found a site called https://www.pexels.com/ which I’ll shamelessly plug here, and which appears to be quite good. Decent selection Good images, free to download and royalty-free, so free to use on the blog. They ask for a donation. If I keep using them, I might give one in the future – I’ve donated to Wikipedia before now because this openness of knowledge, of information, of images even, is a good thing.
But I was wondering, what do my WordPress friends do? Do you have any mines of images that you’d like to share with me? The free-er, the better. The better, the better!
You should also aware of a few other sites, in addition to Pexels, where you can get free photos: Pixabay, Unsplash, Deviant Art, and Morguefile.
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I’ve also got something like 7,000 photos still on Flickr, it’s a rich resource but again you have to be careful with the license. I had to deliberately make mine free-to-use, it wasn’t the default. I was really looking for a 50-something guy slouching on a couch, to go with the last post, although the image I found was okay.
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There we are, a much more appropriate image. I bet people will “like” that post!
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