Well recently I’ve had  a few people say that they like the pictures I use in my posts. Alot of them, Klajdi, Swastik, and Ajith to name a few, asked me to tell them how I do it. It’s surprisingly easy, I swear I even did a comment-post about it over at my writers block post. You technically don’t even need to own a camera to get perfect pictures for each of your posts. All you need is internet and a little time.

My perfect picture (not so) secrets:

Knowing the Creative Commons Licenses.

The most important part of finding the right images for your posts is actually knowing what you can and cannot use. Also knowing what you need when you use them and what you can and/or cannot do with the them. The licenses are pretty simple, and theirs only a couple of them.

The first one is the Attribution License. If the picture you want to uses this one then, your pretty much allowed to use it and edit  it as you wish, but you need to link to the author.

Number two is the Attribution-NoDerivs License. This one basically means you can use the picture but you CANNOT alter, transform, or build upon it and you need to link to the author just like the Attribution License.

Special number three is the Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License. It’s much like the Attribution-NoDerivs License but a little more complicated. You can use the picture but NOT for commercial purposes, you cannot alter, transform or build upon the picture and you need to link to the author.

Numero quatro is the Attribution-NonCommercial License. If the image you wanna use is under this license, then your allowed to use it but not for a commercial purpose. You can also alter, transform, or build upon the picture but like the other Licenses you need to “attribute” to the author (aka link to em)

The fifth is the Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License. It’s just like the fourth License (above this one) but with one added term, if you do share it/use it after altering, transforming, or building upon the picture you need to share it with the same license (ShareAlike)

Last But not least you have the Attribution-ShareAlike License.This one is just like the first but with the added term of the fifth. Your allowed to share/use these images as you wish, you can alter, transform or build upon the picture but you need to share it with the same license.

I stay away from the Non Commercial licenses but I honestly don’t know what qualifies as “commercial” and I have yet to figure it out. So if some one here can explain it in simple, layman’s terms tell me in a comment and I’ll add here.

Where to find the pictures?

Ok, so you know what the different creative commons licenses are, where can you possibly find a place that has a ton of pictures that use em? Well if you look at most of the picture sources, such as the one about getting more comments at your blog, you’ll see that it’s from the one and only flickr.

I use their advanced search page, and I try a few different terms/keywords that my post has. For my writers block post I simply typed is “writers block, like so:

Then I just checked the two boxes at the bottom like so:

This way I know that I can use the pictures here without worrying about lawsuits and threatening letters. I usually check the third box also just so I can safely put that text on the top. Anyway I just hit search and go through the results and pick out my favorite one.

Like I said earlier it’s a simple process, it won’t take you more than 10 minutes per a picture. So how do you find pictures for your post? Do you do anything differently?

P.S. Don’t for get to check out my post 10 tips to writing better posts, and find out why images in posts are important.

Image by: Smanography