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Okay so I was doing some research about photo copyright and such. And was wondering if anyone running a blog or website has had to deal with copyright issues?

I personally have been running a blog for almost a year. I started out only using my own pictures but then read from another blogger how she got pictures and such off the Internet for her posts. I've been trying that for some time but after reading this I am thinking about taking those photos down and replacing them with some of my own. I also understand I'm a tiny blogger with maybe 30 views at my highest view rate. But one day I want to be bigger and I don't want to have to deal with this down the road.

Any thought on what I should do? Anyone have expert advice in such matters?

All opinions are welcome. [=

I deal with copyright issues regularly for my work. You should definitely NOT use just random photos from the Internet. Those are copyrighted you really need express permission from the owner to be using them.

However! There are websites out there that provide what are called "royalty free" stock photos. These are photos you can use however you want without credit. Usually you have to pay for them but there are a few that are free: unsplash.com, freeimages.com and freepik.com are a few places you can look. On the last two, sometimes they require you give credit so just be on the lookout for that and give credit where it's due. Also Freepik is basically a free stock image search engine so it will pull results from other free stock image sites. So just be sure to check the requirements from whatever site you are pulling the photo from.

Also, you can usually use Creative Commons photos. The best way to find them is to head over to Flickr and do an advanced search. Find the "license" or "usage" drop down and search for Creative Commons photos under whatever license you need. You can do some research to figure out which you can use. Then enter your keywords and search! Just be sure to credit all CC photos properly. (Usually a format like "Picture name" by "user" is licensed under Creative Commons 2.0).

Try morguefile.com. Lots of high resolution royalty free images.

Thank you so much. I was also wondering if Meme and pictures with quotes are copyrighted as well?

You both have been extremely helpful I can't thank you enough! ^_^

Interesting... Good to know not that I blog anymore,