How to Use Flickr to Find Photos for Your Blog Posts

Think about the blog posts that catch your attention. Generally they have great headlines (titles), a provocative theme and often include an image that illustrates the content. I confess I'm not very consistent about using images in my blog posts, yet I appreciate when bloggers use them. As the saying goes: a picture is worth a thousand words.

As a contributing author to Social Media Examiner, one of my responsibilities is to include 2-3 images for every article I submit. Today, while working on an article about finding inspiration for blog content, I referred to a post on Copyblogger called 5 Essential Blogging Tips from the Father of Chinese Philosophy as being a good example of using classics and history as a source.

Then, I thought it would be interesting to find a picture to illustrate or depict Confucius. I clicked over to Flickr, the photo sharing site, and did a search on the keyword "Confucius." Over 3300 results were found! I quickly realized I need to refine my search.

The key thing to remember about using images from Flickr is that you must have permission. Photographers indicate which images you can use by assigning them a Creative Commons attribution indicating how much permission you have.

Here's how to find out if you can use an image:

On Flickr you can do an advanced search and find only photos that have Creative Commons licensing. This will save you a lot of time scanning photos!

Make sure to select search By Creative Commons. 

Once you find a photo you like, check to see what rights are attributed to its use. 

Click through to see the rights and if you use the image, copy HTML in the Attribution field and paste in your blog post. Remember, you always want to give credit where credit is due!

 

Photo Credit:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/arcticpuppy/ / CC BY 2.0

Comments

[blogalize.me]

great post!
one additional "trick" i use to find photos that can be re-used (via creative commons):

- go to yahoo, click the "images" on the top of the search box, and make a search.

- on the results page, and right underneath the "search box" (should be displaying the keywords you are searching for), there is a "More filters" link.

- click the "more filters" link, and you'll have some options to apply to your search results, including the "creator allows reuse".

this way, your search will probably render more results than just flickr (but, mainly, these results will come from flickr).

cheers!

[a.i.s.]

Any suggestions on how to use images in this blog. Put more, different, larger, smaller ones. Appreciate your comment. http://otherideas.typepad.com/studyhorsemanship_workflo/

[Carol Roy]

You can always subscribe to sites such as Shutterstock which will allow you to use images on commercial sites and the subscription is a business tax right off!

[Chuck Smith]

thanks for this Denise. I am always looking for better photos, but I never knew exactly how to find them.

[Denise Wakeman]

Great tip for finding photos on Yahoo. Thanks so much for your contribution!

Blog on...

[Denise Wakeman]

Thanks, Carol. Yes, Shutterstock and istockphoto are both good for finding royalty free images.

http://istockphoto.com
http://shutterstock.com

Thanks for the reminder!

[Elizabeth H. Cottrell]

Thank you. This post...and the responses...were chock full of important, practical information.

[Lee Bells]

Just wondering...on a site that focuses on conversion - getting a viewer to do something, would you use a photograph? I mainly see logos, header images and the lie, but would you use an actual photograph?

[Ramsey A. Amin, DDS]

Better yet. A picture can save you a thousand words!
Ramsey Amin, DDS

[imabiz]

thank for great tips... nice info..