Note 194 – Adding a free Flickr image to your blog post

I decided that today was going to be the day that I learnt how to add a free online Flickr image to my blog.  Before going straight to the Flickr website, I typed in ‘Free blog photos’ in Google which brought back 995 million results.  The article that caught my eye was called Top 6 Sites to Find Free Photos to Use on Your Blog on About.com which explains how challenging it is to find free photos to use on your blog and lists many sources.

The main point they mention is that you should check the copyright restrictions.  Sometimes, just an attribution is required (credit back to the photographer) or other times you might have to notify the photographer or something more.  This all sounded okay to me, so I clicked on the Flickr link in the article.

Flickr

A second article I read on About.com’s site is called Finding Free Photos from Flickr to Use on Your Blog which explains that Flickr is “a photo sharing website that contains thousands of photos uploaded by people from all over the world”.  You have to remember that it’s other people’s photos that you are using and you must adhere to Flickr’s guidelines i.e. before using Flickr, it is important to understand creative commons licences.

Creative commons licences – Attribution licence

Registered users of Flickr can choose to share their photos under a creative commons licence (of which there are a few).  Anyone can use these photos and by exploring creative commons in Flickr you can see the different types of licences and the rules around each type.  I chose to view photos under attribution licence (as you only have to attribute the photographer and add link to the source). 

Once in the attribution licence section, I clicked on ‘see more’ (which had 29.8 million photos at the time of writing).  The next screen allows you to search for a topic.  I typed ‘writing’, but you can choose anything.  The image below is the one I chose and I have attributed the photographer by including his Flickr user name and also a link back to the photo on Flickr (this is the important part as it credits the photographer and provides a link to the source).  The next section explains how I got the image from Flickr to my WordPress blog.

From Flickr to WordPress 

In Flickr, you need to have the photo you want to use open, and your aim will be to copy the ‘image URL‘ from the photo.   To do this, click Actions — View all sizes and and once you’ve chosen a size you can click on the download option.  You can then save it on your computer (or wherever you choose).  To add the image into your blog post, you can either add it as an image using the add image button in your edit post window or save it in your WordPress media library and add it that way. 

There is a WordPress forum which might also help with adding photos to your blog via URL.   A user actually posted a Flickr question on there which helped me.

If you choose to add a Flickr image to your blog post, please leave me a comment to let me know how you get on.  I would also be interested to know if you get your images from a source other than Flickr.

Thanks 

This blog post forms part of my writing challenge. Don’t forget that you can subscribe to receive my daily blogs by email so that you don’t miss any. Just click ‘sign me up’ on the home page. Alternatively you can follow my blogs on Twitter or my ‘Tips and Luxuries‘ Facebook page. Requests for future blogs (punctuation/grammar/writing tips) are always welcome.

Until tomorrow…

Sandra
Freelance writer
Please visit www.sandramadeira.com for more information on my services as a freelance writer.

My writing challenge

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