Worth a thousand words
I’m talking about pictures. Using photos can boost the visibility and interest of any article, assuming you can find the right photo to illustrate your topic. If you write about something “close to home”, you may be able to use your own photography for all your photo needs. While that would easily solve your problems, it’s not that likely a scenario. So off you go through your favorite search engines in search of photos.
My first comment is that NOT ALL PHOTOS ARE FREE TO COPY AND USE. Just because someone has a great photo up on their website, does not give you the right to take it. If you are serious about being a professional, then behave like one. Don’t steal. Ok, I said it. Now on to more helpful suggestions.
Of course, there is nothing stopping you from contacting the photo owner and asking permission. I find it a bit too time consuming, but if there is some photo that is “perfect” then you can always go that route. Offer a link back to their website along with photo credit.
Or the other (easier) way is to use royalty-free stock photos. There are tons of sites out there. And “royalty-free” doesn’t actually mean “totally free”. It means (I think) that you don’t need to pay any sort of per-view fees, just a one-time download fee. There is nothing wrong with that, if you have the budget, but there are lots of sites that offer totally free photos for your use. Here are a few to try:
My personal first choice is Stock.xchng. They have a really big collection of photos in many topic areas. The search features could use some work, since they work on however people tag their photos and are not always that accurate. There are several levels of use. Some photos are free and you can just use them at your leisure (white balls next to the photo title when you search). After that, some require that you just give notice and/or credit to the owner, and some require that you get permission first (various shades of gray balls). Some photos are listed as “premium” and require a fee to use. You will need to register with the site in order to download, or you could just copy the display pics if they are big enough. That’s what I usually do since a 200 pixel photo is big enough for most articles.
Another good place to find free photos is Flickr Creative Commons. Not all photos on Flickr are free to use, so do your browsing in the Creative Commons section for the ones you can have. Again, there are various levels of use, mostly dealing with how it will be used. You usually have to give credit for the photo and may have to use it on a non-commercial site, which may not apply to your writing needs.
Another commons variety comes from Wikipedia at their Wikimedia Commons. I think all photos are free to use without specific permission. I could be wrong, so read the terms of use. The site is a bit clumsy to use, but does have lots of pictures.
This is by no means a complete list, but with the photos available through these 3 sources, you’ll likely be able to illustrate your articles for a very long time.
