a blog
Hint: No. I’m not a big fan of taking pictures. But I did snap this shot from our hotel window in Toronto last week. Pretty good for a smartphone camera, if I do say so myself! That’s the CN Tower in the center — the tallest freestanding structure in the western hemisphere. We had dinner at the top!
Anyone who’s spent more than a few hours putting together a new blog or website knows how hard it can be to find good photos. Not only is the right subject and resolution hard to come by, but photos on the internet are often protected by copyright and not available for re-use on your website (especially if your website is or includes a commercial venture).
To avoid copyright issues, I’ve often used WikiCommons photos for websites I put together. This can be tedious, though, as sifting through WikiCommons for quality photos is like looking for Brooks Brothers at Walmart. Most photos there are just downright bad.
So I thought I’d share a new resource I discovered yesterday while building a website for a new business. It’s called Unsplash. Its talented curators publish 10 new photos every 10 days under a Creative Commons Zero license, which means you can “copy, modify, distribute and use the photos for free, including commercial purposes, without asking permission from or providing attribution to the photographer or Unsplash.”
That makes things easy. I’m not sure who’s behind this project, but it’s a blogger’s jackpot. The photos are all superb. They all have a similar look and feel to them—I think the word is “vintage.”
One downside is that you can’t search photos by keyword. And their collection is pretty large by now, so sifting through every single photo to find your subject really doesn’t work. But I actually like that feature (or lack of, to be precise). It forces me to view photos I otherwise wouldn’t see. And again, they are all such great photos, I usually end up spending more time there than I intended anyways.
Just my two cents for the day. I want to get back to a regular posting schedule. I’m out of town this weekend, but plan to resume one-a-day posts when I return.