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Five Easy Photography Tips For Bloggers

Self Portrait in my Old High School, France, 2010

When I first started blogging five years ago, I was more interested in writing than in taking pictures. Most of my posts were text-only and I didn’t even have a profile picture.

And then came magazine-style blog themes, with thumbnail pictures. They quickly became popular and allowed a lot of bloggers to add pictures easily to their posts. I embraced the trend—and photography.

So here are my tips for bloggers who want to post pictures online.

Resize accordingly

Most digital cameras produce large, pixel-heavy JPEG files. Mine are usually 3872 px x 2592 px straight out of camera. The first thing you need to do if you want to post pictures on your blog is to resize them. Measure your content area in pixels—typically 400 px to 700 px long.

You can use the MesureIt Firefox plugin or a photo editing software. Alternatively, there are many online tools, such as Shrinkpictures, Pic Resize, or Resize Pic. You can constraint proportions (so that it doesn’t look stretched) or resize it while cropping, allowing different widths and heights. Just remember the golden rule—you can make a picture smaller but you cannot make a picture bigger (stretch it), otherwise resolution will be awful.

Choose your pictures wisely

The best part with digital cameras is that you can take a thousand pictures very easily—but it doesn’t mean you have to post 999 pictures of the same object/person/animal from a slightly different angle!

Do your readers a favour and cherry-pick your pictures. Besides, not everybody has a fast Internet connection and the more images on a page, the slower it loads. Just imagine you are a magazine editor, pick the best shots that illustrate your story, choose the meaningful images and leave the rest on your computer.

Consider using a plugin or a widget designed for photos

Plugins or widgets are the best way for your readers to stay in touch with your photo adventures and they are very easy to maintain. Basically, they aggregate the pictures and photo albums you upload on other websites (such as Facebook, Flickr, Picasa) and display the latest thumbnail pictures.

You can find all kinds of plugins for WordPress on the WordPress Plugin Directory, and for Blogger, have a look at Blogger Plugins.

Play fair

Some bloggers are not photographers, yet it’s nice to have a picture illustrating a post. Fair enough. Now remember, it’s not because it’s on the web that it doesn’t have an owner or a creator. In other words, don’t just use Google Image to find a suitable picture and proceed with using it. Come on, haven’t you heard of copyright?

Flickr is a good way to find free pictures to use but remember to check the picture’s licence. And it’s simply good etiquette to email the photographer and ask for permission to use the picture anyway.

But don’t be paranoid

I know some bloggers and photographers who simply refuse to put their photos online because “ya know, someone may steal them.” Well, yes, the minute you put your work online you expose it to the risk of theft. And I agree that Internet users tend to grab materials without even thinking it belongs to someone. That said, don’t be paranoid. Educate people rather than mumbling all alone about disrespectful users!

Photographers who put huge and ugly copyright notices all over the website drive me nuts. They first assure you they will kill anyone who dares to stare at their precious work for more than two seconds and at the same time beg for attention. Similarly, some photography put watermarks so big that you can barely see the picture—read Copyright Embedding Tool for the Ultra Paranoid Photographer for a good laugh!

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Zhu

French woman in English Canada.

Exploring the world with my camera since 1999, translating sentences for a living, writing stories that may or may not get attention.

Firm believer that nobody is normal... and it’s better this way.

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