Looking for Stock Photography
When I started this project I knew I was going to need some photography. But, I was not quite sure what to do at first nor was it all that important to get the blog off the ground. So, I kicked this off with nothing but screenshots. Now that OpenGraph meta tags are on the site and content is going on LinkedIn, this is the time to begin getting some more imagery in the blog posts. If you are scratching your head wondering what OpenGraph is, I plan on writing a post on the topic in the near future. So hold tight.
Moving on. Where can one get imagery for a website? There are a couple of places to get this type of content:
I ruled out Shutterstock and Adobe Stock right away. They both had monthly subscriptions to use the images as I wanted. Unless there is an explicit need to subscribe I will hold off. On to the third option. Free Pix seems to solve the problem. Taking a look at the licensing, they require that you place attribution for each image used. That is not an issue, I'm happy to give credit where credit is due. Now that we can agree to the terms, what does the available content look like? There were some things of interest, but overall, not impressed. Perhaps, I should be digging a little deeper. Give the search 10 more minutes. If nothing is found in 10 minutes Free Pix will be the option.
Unsplash came up on the next page of search results. This might be the one. The home page is grabbing my attention right away. They are very clear about what they are about. No hidden licensing link. It is the first link after the navigation menu in a hero banner. Clear and easy to understand terms, check. But, how about the content? They have tons of it! I figured a good starting place was to try finding images for existing blog posts. I found that I was struggling to choose which image was the better fit for a blog post. What a great problem to have. This is the one, the decision has been made.
Now it is time to make the tough decisions of what images best fit the existing blog posts.