How To Use Images For Your Website

Taking your own photos

Taking your own photographs for your website certainly has its benefits. For one, you won’t have to worry about copyrighting laws and your photos are guaranteed to be unique and customised to your site.

However, it is important that you get this right and don’t end up looking unprofessional and amateur. A blurry photo with your colleague accidently caught in the background is never going to go down well.

If you’re getting the photos taken in-house then make sure you use high quality equipment. If you don’t have any of your own then it can be easily hired for as long as you need. Alternatively, you could make an investment and hire a professional photographer. Sit down with them and tell them exactly what you want.

This guarantees you’ll get some decent looking photos for your site without the hassle of doing it yourself.

Purchasing photos

You’ll need to remember that when a photographer takes a photo, they own all rights to it and therefore it is automatically copyrighted. Even if it is splashed across the internet, they still own it. You’ll need permission to use the photo and will therefore need to purchase a license. There are normally individual terms of agreement for these photos such as where they can be used and how long for.

A more affordable and accessible way to purchase photos is to use royalty-free images. They are normally quite cheap with many starting from under £1 and increasing in price depending on the photo. There is a large selection and the images can be used multiple times without having to pay each time. These are great as they have hardly any limitations on them and are flexible to use.

There are many stock libraries on the internet with thousands of photos in every category. These are very popular with bloggers and small businesses. Most photos will state that they are not for commercial use. This means that you may use them on your website but cannot benefit from selling them on or profiting from them in any way.

Flickr

Flickr is a widely used photo and social networking site where both amateur and professional photographers showcase their photography. A lot of them won’t be available to use for your website but look out for the ones that are ticked under the Creative Commons licence. These can be used as long as you link back to the photo with the photographer’s details.

Sizing

Images for your website should be of high quality and in high resolution. Having an image that is too large for your website will slow down the loading speed dramatically. This is an important factor to consider as it can make or break your website.

Loading time is one of the main things that will drive a visitor away from your site.

Having all your images saved to a computer means that you can customise and size your photos yourself if you need to. You’ll be able to crop, add effects and make any edits.

How to use images for your website