…time to get your crayons and your pencils!
The value of illustration to underscore writing is questionable to me. When I see a picture next to a blog entry I set my mind to “magazine” setting, and deal with the piece in the same way I’d deal with something in Entertainment Weekly. It’s automatic, the result of 40 years of conditioning. I just don’t expect as much from the writing in an illustrated piece. On the other hand, when I see a blog entry without pictures my mind tends to treat the writing with a bit more gravitas. The way I’d treat a textbook or a novel. Again, the response is automatic.
I find it very interesting, then, that so many “Build your blog audience” advice pieces tell people to use pictures as a way to draw readers. They say it brings more readers in–how they figure this out I don’t know. It’s certainly not through scientific method. But someone said it once and on the internet that’s as much proof as you need, apparently, and now it’s a “fact”. So blog entries have pictures in them.
The thing is, those pictures are very often copyrighted. On the occasions when I use a picture on here I spend a good chunk of time making sure the copyright situation allows for the picture to be posted on my site. I figure I’d be pretty miffed if a photographer used paragraphs of my writing to make his photography blog more interesting. Sure I’d be flattered initially, but ultimately miffed as hell. My words are my work, my craft. I know that artists feel the same way.
I got into a discussion about this with some other writers (they all have published books–more on that in a minute) and from there hopped to several other discussions. There is an actual belief out there that ‘if you put it on the internet, the picture automatically becomes part of the public domain and is up for grabs.’ Times like this I hate the Internet. This is the same kind of logic that would say it’s okay to steal your neighbours’ ferns off their porch. “If you put it out front on the street where everyone can see it, you’re giving it away. So it’s my fern now.”
Nobody should steal another person’s work, but the published authors who use copyright-protected material are putting themselves in greater jeopardy than the blogger who just writes for her blog. If their blog is used in any way to promote their novels, an attorney can argue that they are indirectly profiting from the blog and–boom! Time to pay up. It’s especially sad that so many of the articles advising on the use of pictures are directed at authors who are just now getting into blogging. They’re being steered down the very wrongest of roads.
Just Another Pretty Farce 
I like images on a blog if they enhance the experience. I don’t like i stock type pictures, which never enhance (IMO), but detract from a piece. When I use images on my blog, I use my dad’s art, my daughter’s art, or wiki commons images, with the exception being the last image I posted (a movie still), which I really have no defense for using, exept that I own a copy of the film. Wiki authors like to give a fair use rationale for movie stills, and I suppose if the film companies wanted to go after them, they would. But I think it would be weird. It has to do with that fine line that modern artists have between theft and marketing. If people are stealing their work, they usually perceive that as a good thing when they’re given proper attribution. For example, my dad was both excited and annoyed when a non local newspaper stole some of his painting images without his permission. All that said, you’re right. People are very lax with image copyrights.
I like images — just as cover art helps readers determine if they would like a book, through clues of imgaery and style and font choice, so too does a picture for a blog post.
However, I hope those writers who steal images don’t mind when someone steals their words. 😛 I can’t believe they really think it’s okay…!
I think the usefulness of the image really depends on the blog and the images. An image that is attractive and relevant to the writing can help a reader, at a glance, identify the posts that they might most want to read. This is especially true for blog with layouts more like a newspaper versus the standard single column of text.
Other the other hand, the images HAVE to be relevant. There was this blogger who always used to post the the Carnival of the Cats (the blog carnival that is supposed to be about cats). She’d enter two or three posts per carnival, but when you actually clicked through to read her post it was a non-feline-related political rant with a random picture of her cat stuck in the middle of it. Left the reader feeling very cheated because you see the cat and then go to read the writing and discover it has nothing at all to do with the cat. The fact that she posted 2-3 links per carnival was even more annoying because she was so obviously just whoring out her cat for traffic.
But in any case, pictures, when used, ABSOLUTELY should be used with permission or in a manner otherwise authorized by the image’s license.
In that case, I’d go yell at the cat carnival people to tell them they need to have editorial standards. 😀