A common mistake made by new bloggers is unauthorized use of photos. Typically a person does some initial research and comes up with terms like “Fair Use” and theorizes that their use of some image would be allowable. Others just figure that no one is going to notice that they borrowed an image. Either approach can get a blogger into trouble.
First, if you earn income from advertising then you might be held to a higher standard of fair use, and could put at risk the long term profitability of your project. Stealing a photo can land you in civil court and when it’s done you will be lucky to have just lost your domain, web page or blog. Financial damages can quickly exceed whatever you hoped to earn from many hours of hard work and creativity.
Escazu at Night
While “Fair Use” is good for making short quotations of text it gets more complicated with images. Allowable Fair Use requires among other things that the use of the photo not diminish its marketability. This can cause a big problem when the photo was taken a professional photographer.
The most important thing to remember about “Fair Use” is that it is a legal question, which means that you could end up in a courtroom, and would have to hire an attorney to defend your interpretation. If the idea of going to court and paying legal expenses is something you would like to avoid, then steer clear of unauthorized photo use.
Tabacon Hot Springs and Volcano
The easiest option to get photos for your blog is to simply go out and take photos personally. Costa Rica provides plenty of opportunities for photography, and over the years you can build up a considerable collection. Remember you live in Costa Rica, and being here is a competitive advantage you hold over many English language bloggers. You can take plenty of photos in your own backyard or even go on day trips at relatively low expense and time invested.
Apart from paying for royalty free photos or building your own photography collection there are a couple of low budget options for bloggers, the easiest of which is to use photos that are not copyrighted or in the public domain. You don’t have to pay or give credit for these types of images, but they are difficult to find because even if a photo or website doesn’t have a copyright notice there is no guarantee that the photo you borrow hasn’t been stolen from somewhere else.
Cow Parade in San Jose
Works of the United States Federal Government are considered Public Domain, and while this includes photos taken by government employees in their official capacity it doesn’t always extend to private organizations that work on contract. You should check the website of the agency in question in order to be sure.
Also avoid misrepresenting yourself as a government agency. It’s one thing to borrow a photo, but another thing to suggest that the government in some way endorses your blog or product.
Public domain images of the federal government are especially useful when it comes to wildlife or outdoor landscapes. While in the past the majority of work published on the website of the U.S. Embassy in Costa Rica has been in text, photos are becoming increasing common. Consider that most of this material is fair game, and the embassy’s Facebook Profile is a rich source of images.
Orchids in Costa Rica
Perhaps the best place to get photos is from an advanced search of Creative Commons images on Flickr. Attribution requires that you link the photo to the original or cite the source in some obvious manner. I prefer to link the photos because that allows the reader to see larger versions of the photos.
In fact you might consider making a small collection on Flickr, and set the properties on your photos as Creative Commons. You don’t have to put everything up there, but a sampling of your best work might get your Photostream and blog more traffic. While Flickr is free you can quickly use up your storage quota, so be sure to resize your images to a width between 1024 and 1600 pixels prior to uploading.
