Writing up for your WordPress blog is one thing, requiring a lot of hard work, pressure and pain, but blogging is not only about writing on amazing topics but adding catchy photos on these blogs gives a lot of real weight to it. Moreover, a blog post without Photos is just like writing a blog without any interestingness.

There are number of tools available online which helps bloggers find the right photos for their blog and makes adding them to their blog both fast and easy. All required is giving worth a shot, go on the tool (mentioned below), search for photos by using the search box by putting right keywords, preview the photo and click “get photo” to download it but remember to give the proper attribution link.

PhotoPin

PhotoPin uses the Flickr API to find the best suitable image for you. The site searches creative commons photos which you can use for your blog although to note that the site is directly not associated with Flickr in anyway, other than it just powered its search results using their API.

Creative Commons Search

Creative Commons Search allow you to search and fine photos from thirteen other websites, including Europeana, Flickr, Fotopedia, Google, Google Images, Jamendo, Open Clip Art Library, SpinXpress, Wikimedia Commons, YouTube, Pixabay, ccMixter and SoundCloud. Moreover, the site also let you tell that whether the photo you like can be use for commercial purposes or not.

WikiMedia Commons

Searching for photos on WikiMedia Commons will take you to the photo’s information page, with share includes the copyright status, licensing conditions.  Photos come under free license, including as CC, GNU Free Documentation License, Open Data Commons and Free Art License. If you are browsing Commons for the first time, you may want to start with Featured pictures, Quality images or Valued images.

Google Image Search

Google is well known for providing huge collection of photos which it crawl and index from hundreds of thousands of websites across the web. But, it is always near to impossible to learn at first stage that the photo you are going to use belongs to whom, even in some cases, you don’t know exactly that are you using the copyrighted material or what?

In order to help you with that and find the perfect general use photo, on the Google Image site, click on Advanced Image Search and under “usage rights” select the most appropriate option. With this way, you can use those photos which aren’t restricted by copyright.

Flickr

Flickr is one of the best online photo management and sharing application in the world. You can find billions of photos on Flickr which comes as either copyrighted or available under a CC license. To check on licensing, you have to go to the photo, and check on the right bottom and see on licensing.

Stock.xchng

As a user you can gain access to thousands of free high-quality, hand-picked photos and graphics although you strongly need to stick to the rules totally as per site’s photo licensing agreement and in some cases you have to take permission from the photo owner before using it.

Understanding Copyright and Photo Licensing

It’s very much important to understand the licensing before using any of photos – mainly someone else’s work. If any photo having a copyrighted as its license status, then it means you can’t use the work directly rather you have to seek permission first.

But, the condition is not same for using all photos. There are hundreds of thousands of photos also out there which are available under different types of licensing and the one which you see commonly across is Creative Commons. There are six types of Creative Commons licenses:

• Attribution License: This license lets others distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon your work, even commercially, as long as they credit you for the original creation.
• Attribution Share Alike License: This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work even for commercial reasons, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
• Attribution No Derivatives License: This license allows for redistribution, commercial and non-commercial, as long as it is passed along unchanged and in whole, with credit given to you.
• Attribution Non-Commercial License: This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, and although their new works must also acknowledge you and be non-commercial, they don’t have to license their derivative works on the same terms.
• Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike License: This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations under the identical terms.
• Attribution Non Commercial No Derivatives License: This license is the most restrictive of the six main licenses, allowing redistribution. This license is often called the “free advertising” license

Photo Credit: Flickr/Christopher Ross, Flickr/Kristina D.C. Hoeppner