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How to Manage Your Photo Blog: Before digital photography, you had to buy film, put it in your camera, take care not to waste a shot, drop off the film to be developed, wait a few days, and then pick it up. All of that work for 24–36 photos.
Now, all you have to do is pull out your digital camera or smartphone, take as many photos as you want, and look at them right away. If you’re just starting out with your brand’s blog or think your photo strategy could be better, here are some tips for choosing the right photos, developing a photo style, and using photos in general to make your writing better.
Steps to Manage Your Photo Blog
Set up a folder on your computer called Blog Images
We took a class called “Writing for the Web” when we was in graduate school. Our professor told us to put all of our website images in a separate folder on our computers. I thought she had lost her mind.
A few years later, we have thousands of pictures on my computer, just like you probably do. I don’t want to look through all of those pictures to find the ones that have to do with my blog. Set up a separate folder for your blog images to save yourself time and work.
Set up a folder called Stock Photos-Commercial Use
You can skip this step if you take all your own photos or if your blog doesn’t make money. But if you make money from your blog, you need to make sure that any photos you buy or download are licensed for business use. Keeping all of your photos for business use in one place will make things a lot easier to handle. So, you’ll know which pictures you can use on your blog and which ones you can’t.
Set up a folder for each photo source
By making a folder for each source, you’ll be able to see at a glance where you got each photo. Some of my photos came from paid stock photo services, so named those folders after the services (such as 123rf). I also have photos that I downloaded for free, and I put them in folders with the name of the site where I got them.
Make sure you write down the information about where each photo came from so that you can give credit to the owner on your blog. We either take a screen shot or copy and paste the attribution requirements into a Word document.
Set up an Images Used folder inside each Source folder
Every source folder I use has a folder called “Images Used.” When we use an image in a blog post, I drag the original into the Images Used folder. Then, when we want to use a picture in a blog post, we can’t find the ones I’ve already used.
Set up additional folders that meet your blogging needs
You might need more folders to keep your pictures in order. we also have a folder for all my social media headers, icons, and profile photos. we also made folders for individual posts that have a lot of screenshots or other images.
Keep a log of the images that you have used
- image source
- file name of the image
- name of the post
- date the post was published
- whether or not attribution is required
FAQ
How do I protect my photos on my blog?
If you share your photos online in public places like your own website or blog, a site where you sell your photos or photography services, or on social media sites like Instagram or Flickr, it may be important to use a copyright symbol.
Do I need to copyright my photos?
Your picture doesn’t have to be registered with the US Copyright Office. But registering is strongly recommended because it shows that you own the picture in question. This is used as proof in court cases. Also, if you sue and don’t register, you can only get what you really lost.