Playing with Pictures

Pictures and words go together absurdedly well. Each seems to be somewhat at a loss without the other. As I get into writing I feel compelled to dress it up with photos, and as I get into photos I feel inspired to write up something worthy of that caliber. It's been busy, but enjoyable. I've kinda been using it as an escape from normal life.

I found out the other day just how widespread--and deep--breach of copyright goes with images these days. Spent two hours trying to track down the original artist of a photo I love so I could properly credit it. Though I'm still lookign for that one, in the process I found out how to do that with most images, and I'm slowly now going through my Pinterest boards to repin everything from their original sources. Sometimes having a conscience sucks.

Tumblr has similar issues.

Compounding these problems, Wordpress offers plugins that automatically place a Pinterest or Tumblr feed in your sidebar or wherever else you put it. Which means bloggers may decorate their site with pictures without the photographer's permission. Furthermore, some Pinterest plugins allow the option to remove the description as well. So that's zero credit to the original artist.

I wanted to decorate my blog with Pins. Really, I did. I got so freakin' excited about it. And some aspects of the plugins I feel could be used ethically. But at minimum, the way I feel currently is that if a photo is displayed without permission then it should be credited on that same page (preferably directly beneath the photo) as well as a link back to the original source. For me personally, removing that crosses a line. Though I've read dizzying amounts of info on copyright, the best rule of thumb I keep coming back to is: in what ways would I feel comfortable someone else using my images without my permission? And then I follow those guidelines.

Today was also the first time I watermarked a photo! Not even sure I did it right; I've been learning to use GIMP for photo editing and I just followed a tutorial I dredged up through google. Slightly dated, but I managed to figure it out. Main thing is I didn't want the watermark to intrude on the photo, detracting the beholder from enjoying it. Now that I'm aware of the issues, I'm really glad to see identifiable watermarks, mine or others'. Plus it makes that photo look so damn important.

The majority of my web traffic so far has been from Pinterest, actually.

As I enjoy myself on Pinterest and Tumblr separate from my blog (each with differing restrictions and advantages) I realized the other day that some people might have a favorite social media, and that might be the only place they follow me. As such, I should still try to make sure I get excerpts of my blog posts there. It's been interesting to try this on Pinterest. My attempts thus far are painfully amateur, but then again I've never done graphic design before. All this is a learning curve that will be over with in a month's time.

A picture is worth a thousand words, yet worth twice that if bundled with a goodly passel of verbal artistry. Achieving the latter sounds like my idea of fun.