As a blogger, you need to understand the rules of the road, so that you will be a good citizen of the Internet — and a great American! Blog posts look really cool and are more fun to read when you post an image along with your writing.

Copyright Meg Cullar

Although the Internet is full of images that you can click and drag to your desktop and then post on your blog, it’s not always legal to do so. Some of the images are “copyrighted” and belong to people who prefer not to share or who want to be paid for their work.

But sometimes it’s hard to know what is OK to use and what is not. How to properly use photos is a journalism legal issue that is pertinent for anyone who has a Facebook page, Twitter account, or does anything else online.

Here’s a link to some helpful guidelines from Baylor Libraries.

Baylor Libraries Copyright page

If you click “Free Stuff,” you will find some links, but still, not everything on these links is truly free. When you get to each site, you must read the small print.

A couple of phrases you need to understand are “Creative Commons” and “public domain.” Creative Commons is a system for allowing work to be shared via the Internet. But there are usually stipulations. Maybe it’s free, but you need to ask permission. Or maybe you need to provide a link. Again, always read the small print. “Public domain” means that it is free. This usually applies to work that is so old that the copyright has expired. Make sure that the website is reliable before believing a claim of “public domain.”

Sites like Flikr use the word “sharing” to describe their mission, but they don’t really mean sharing for free. Many of the images there are by photographers who are promoting their services. Always look for the word “copyright” attached to a specific photo and read what it says. Sometimes you may use the photo if you provide a link back to the photographer. (They want the publicity.) Sometimes there are other stipulations.

Here is a cautionary tale from a woman who blogs about romance novels. (So please excuse the lurid book cover photos along the side — that should at least make you click the link!) By the way, product photos will rarely get you into trouble if you are promoting the product.

A cautionary tale

The safest thing to do is to take photos yourself or use photos taken by people you know who agree to share them with you. You could have a friend take a photo of you. You could take a photo of your TV when you’re watching the news. You could take a photo of someone reading a newspaper. You could walk up to random people in the library and ask to take their photo — you already know how to do that! You could take a photo of an American flag to illustrate a political topic blogs. But you cannot click and drag the photo of someone that was in the Washington Post. And you cannot use the photo of my flag painting above, unless you ask my permission. But I will say yes, as long as  you give me credit — for the painting and the photo.

I took all the photos of Baylor’s campus that are the header for our class blog. And I took of my keyboard and manipulated it for the header of this blog. So just be creative and look around you. It’s easy to take great campus photos on a pretty day, so whip out your smart phone when the sky is blue, and start creating your own photos!

And remember — you will get blogging extra credit if you post a self-portrait photo. Or you can find a buddy and take photos of each other. Remember the two big tips you got from our guest photographer — light and angle. Now go and create!