Using Images to Tell Your Story - Places to Find Images Online
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If you're not interested in using Flickr, the simplest way to find images online is to go to Google and do a search for free photos. You'll find plenty of web sites, but you'll want to check their terms. FreeFoto.com, for example, lets anyone use their images, even commercial sites, as long they get a link back and an attribution. You can also purchase their images, in which case you don't need to provide the link back and attribution.
Stockxchng.com is another free photo site with a decent assortment of images. They seem to be associated with StockXpert.com, which charges a fee for stock images. StockXpert seems to have a pretty easy-to-understand interface, and many of their images are not very expensive at all.
You might also find it useful to hunt down particular kinds of free images. If your blog focuses on space news, for example, I probably don't have to tell you about NASA's Astronomy Picture of the Day web site. If you scroll to the bottom of each picture, you will find a link at which the rights applying to the image are explained. The best part, though, is that images that are owned by NASA are in the public domain. Well, that's the second best part, actually; the best part is the images themselves.
Photograph courtesy of NASA (http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap080915.html).
Images convey ideas to your readers. You can use them to instruct, to set the tone for your web site, to make your visitors feel good, to get a laugh, to make them want to keep reading...the list goes on and on. Sonia Simone at Copyblogger likes to use images to highlight her headlines; they give them a little extra punch that draws in readers. James Payne, our editor-in-chief, likes to use images in his articles to drive a point home in a humorous way. People remember images well; if they see images on your blog or web site that they like, it will encourage them to come back. And I trust I don't need to remind you of the advantages of repeat traffic, do I? Good luck!
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