Photo Attribution & Creative Commons

I know this is a sandboarding blog, so I'll keep posts like this to a minimum but to anyone who wants to learn blogging and wants to stay on the right side of the law and avoid a plume of legal trouble, stay alert.

I've had some people saying that I inspire them which is good because I think writing really lets my creativity flow, motivates me, and helps me become more known in my field but if you're going to use photography in your work, please do it properly.

Ever since I've started this blog, I've referenced photos in many different ways; originally I've looked back and I've seen they have been rubbish in comparison to 2019, but in order to be a good blogger and a saint compared to a sinner, you need to have 4 items:

• Title (Every photo will have a name, whether it's the standard file name on your phone or a name someone has given a specific piece of work, it's named.)
• Author (Whoever owns the photo, took it, or made it what it is; there will be an author too.)
• Source (Basically, where you got the photo from; just attaching a link is sufficient enough.)
• License (When the author uploaded the photo online, which creative commons license did they give?)

Notice I said "Creative Commons" and bloggers tend to use these photos because getting any photo can be really complicated, because normally you'd have to ask the owner of the photo if you can use it, and then you'd have to pay what is known as a "Royalty Fee", but with Creative Commons, this doesn't happen; it's free and the person who uploaded the photo cannot revoke the freedoms of the license if you abide by the specific license rules. You can view the licenses offered here.

Also with some licenses, you can modify photos to a certain extent, if you're planning to edit these photos; you must state how you modified the original work, as well as cite the original author(s).

From now on, I will be more consistent in my referencing and I will use the "Ideal attribution" model as pointed out on the Creative Commons website; I will leave my photo as an example as to how I'll be referencing from now on.

 

"Sand Dunes at Holywell Bay, November 2018" by Jack Soley is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0