New policy on images.

Photo via Photography King on Flickr

I decided I'm going to start being more responsible about the images I use on my blog. This means (a) taking more of my own photos and (b) being more careful about copyright and proper attribution. I have always provided sources for the images used on this blog, but sometimes that's only to Pinterest, and not everyone links their pins to the image's original source.

For example, tonight I logged onto Pinterest and searched "camera" for a nice photo for this post. I found a ton of great images, but the first photo I traced from Pinterest to its original source—and the second—was not available for my (legal) use. Then I remembered the Creative Commons search engine I use at work, and I finally found the image you see above. Instead of the fifteen seconds it would have taken me to embed the first image from Pinterest, it took me more than six minutes to find this one. But I feel better about myself, and that's what counts, right?

Anyway, I took some pictures today for a blog post and can't find my camera cord to upload them, so this is a replacement post about why I decided to start taking my own pictures. I was mostly inspired by this post by Kate, who is also the blogger behind Stripes and Polka Dots. In fact, after reading that post I made an extra effort to track down the original sources for the Pinterest pictures I used in this post last week, which was awfully hard. As a journalist, however, my flagrant disregard for copyright laws in my use of images had been bothering me for a while anyway. So thanks, Kate, for kicking my sense of responsibility into gear!

From now on, expect to see more of my own (very amateur) photography and photos with proper attributions, even if it takes me an extra six minutes for every image I use. Thanks for reading! And seriously, check out Kate's post. It's full of good advice and helpful tips for finding legal images.

P.S. — In case you were curious, I don't mind if you pin my images to Pinterest. However, please make sure the photo is linked to that particular post (not to my home page). Thanks!