pictures

All posts tagged pictures

Getty Images

Posted by Beth Gibbons on 07/03/2014
Posted in: General. Tagged: , , , .

Getty Images, the photo agency, had made millions of pictures available online for use on blogs and social media.

Their website has clear instructions and you embed a picture in the same way you’d put a YouTube clip on your blog. When you search for images, the embed symbol doesn’t automatically appear under the pictures, you need to hover over them, and not all pictures are usable. Hopefully their search facility will get better as people use it.

By embedding the picture you’ll get automatic link and credit to Getty with your picture so you don’t need to worry about that. This is what it’ll look like!

Flickr

Posted by Beth Gibbons on 08/10/2013
Posted in: Basics, General. Tagged: , , , , , .

Flickr is a free, online picture and video sharing website that is used by both professional and amateur photographers.

There are millions of pictures available to view but not all of them are available to use.

When people upload their files to Flickr they can decide which licence to share them under. This is set to All rights Reserved as default but many users choose a Creative Commons licence to share with and these are the pictures you may be able to use.

The Commons

This is a joint venture between Flickr and the US Library of Congress. It aims to provide public access to thousands of archived photographs and allow for people to comment and add information to them.

By participating in the project, institutions have to declare that there are ‘no known copyright restrictions’ on the photographs and as such you will be able to use them in your blog. Many of the pictures are of a historical nature and are from institutions around the globe.

I can’t see clearly whether a specific attribution needs to be made with pictures holding a ‘no known copyright restrictions’ licence so make sure you at least link to the picture on Flickr if you use one.

Grip car and trailer car of cable street railway, Seattle

Creative Commons

You can search for images with a Creative Commons licence on Flickr relatively easily. The most recent 100 pictures for each CC licence are displayed and you can enter search terms to find something specific.

To use a picture, click on in and then the ‘share’ button on the bottom right of the screen. There you will be able to copy the HTML for your blog post. The picture will link back to Flickr. For the correct attribution you will need to include the name of the creator and a link to the details of the licence they are using. This link can be found by clicking ‘some rights reserved’ under the flickr member’s details.

Peter's Epauletted Bats

photo credit: Peter A Levey cc

This is undeniably a more difficult way of doing it than using a service like Photopin, but sometimes if you find a picture that’s not quite right and look at what else the Flickr member has in their photostream you may be find more options.

Both Flickr and Creative Commons have useful help files for using images properly.

Wikimedia Commons

Posted by Beth Gibbons on 08/10/2013
Posted in: Basics, General. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

Wikimedia Commons is a media file repository containing pictures, sounds and videos that you can use on your website. Wikipedia and its sister projects, including Wikimedia Commons, operate under a Creative Commons licence. The rules for using and distributing their works are available on their websites.

It is not as simple to use as something like Photopin, with its ability to select your size and have the attribution information to hand, but there is an increasingly vast selection of media for you to use. A benefit of using Wikimedia Commons is that there are more than photographs available. Aside from the audio-visual content there are a variety of diagrams and illustrations.

Facebook users by age
By Tatiraju.rishabh at en.wikipedia [CC-BY-SA-3.0], via Wikimedia Commons

There are a number of options for using a picture/ file including ‘download’ and ‘use on the web’. By clicking on these options you will see how you can select the size you want and the attribution information you need. The ‘use on the web’ option contains the HTML code for you to paste into the ‘text’ element of your post. This will automatically link back to Wikimedia Commons.

It really is worth having a look at the images and files that are available here as you may find things to use across the curriculum, not just within blogging.

Photopin

Posted by Beth Gibbons on 30/09/2013
Posted in: Basics. Tagged: , , , , , .

A great tool for finding Creative Commons images for your blog is Flickr – a free picture and video hosting website. Their search facility can be confusing to navigate if you’re only looking for CC images and on top of that you have to work out how to attribute the picture you’ve selected.

Photopin is a brilliant way of searching Flickr for CC images.

photopin

You enter your search term and a page full of images will appear. The images at the top are sponsored images. Unless you want to pay – don’t use these. They’re separated from the CC images with a grey dotted line. An easy way to tell if you’ve clicked on a free image is whether you’ve stayed on photopin’s website – if clicking on an image takes you to a different site, it’s a paid one.

Once you’ve found your desired image and clicked on ‘preview’ to see the whole thing, click ‘download’. This will bring up a pop-up containing the image (which contains a link to the original image on Flickr). To the right of the image are a number of options for download size. You can save the picture via these links and upload them to your blog. Beneath the size options is a box with a small amount of code in. Copy and paste this into your blog post to ensure you have correctly attributed the picture.

Creative Commons – Search

Posted by Beth Gibbons on 25/09/2013
Posted in: Basics. Tagged: , , , , .

This follows on from the earlier post on Creative Commons.

Use this feature on their website to search the internet for images and files you can use in your blog.

You can search for a variety of things and select whether you want to use them for commercial reasons or whether you want to be able to ‘modify, adapt or build upon’ them.

This is a comprehensive resource however the results you find are not likely to display accreditation information clearly so you will have to check the terms and conditions on each individual website.

Storybird

Posted by Beth Gibbons on 22/02/2013
Posted in: Activities, Applications. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

Create your own stories with Storybird taking inspiration from illustrations and piecing them together to make your own online book. Once books have been moderated you can embed them straight into your blog.

Individual and Teacher/Class accounts are available for free and the usual ‘extra options’ are available to purchase.

This is a great way to inspire children to write, letting the pictures tell the story.

Animoto

Posted by Beth Gibbons on 21/02/2013
Posted in: Activities, Applications. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

You can create some really interesting slideshows of pictures and video for free with Animoto.

Choose from a selection of themes, pre recorded music and video clips or add your own to make slideshows up to 30 seconds long.

This can be a great way to get pupils to display their art work and have control over how it is presented.

Animoto have upgrade options that you can pay for – different resoloution videos, wider selection of themes etc, but it’s not necessary and you will probably find the free options are enough.

As with all these things it’s worth having a small play with to see what it can do but it’s really easy to get the hang of.


Make your own slideshow at Animoto.