I am so excited to be a guest blogger for Meghan. Her enthusiasm for the family friendly blogosphere is so contagious! My name is Lisa (aka Sisterlisa) and I blog at The HomeSpun Life and I’m also the Social Media Manager and CEO of Pix-O-Sphere, a Family Friendly Photo Community. In all my years of making graphics, blogging, and interacting with other photographers online, I have come to learn what most people have questions about and what seems to be at the height of frustration, especially among new bloggers. An area of concern for both bloggers and photographers is copyright issues. A photographer’s work is very important to them and they have various forms of copyright they expect their fans to abide by when using their photos. You can read some in depth information about these various licenses at Creative Commons. Knowledge is power and if you want your photography or blog articles protected, it would behoove you to get equipped with the necessary information. Part of the issue with this, is that many new bloggers and new photographers are unaware of these licenses.
Most photo sharing sites out there, have a Terms of Use contract that we all agree to upon sign up. It’s very important to make sure you read and understand those terms. Many users have ignorantly violated those terms and suffered legal consequences as a result of their quick skim and fast agreement of those terms. Each site has slightly different terms and it’s important to be aware of those. Another important thing to know is that most of these sites update their terms every so often and YOU are responsible for double checking every now and then to see if they have new rules. Not all of these sites will tell you when they have updated, but some will put the word ‘new’ or ‘updated’ next to their terms link at the bottom of their sites. They might also post an announcement on their blog. I suggest you subscribe to all your social network’s site’s blogs to make sure you stay up to date with their terms. If you use Gmail, you can create a Gmail filter to collect those posts into a folder instead of it cluttering up your inbox, just be sure to check them often.
Although photographers and bloggers do everything they can to protect their work, there’s no need to surf the net in fear. Just get yourself educated. Each photographer and blogger has different terms. It is wise for them to have a page on their sites to let you know what their terms are so they don’t have to answer individual emails every time someone has a question.
With blogging, comes the use of photos and we’re always looking for safe sites we can frequent for photo sharing. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to find a photo sharing site that is family friendly, easy to navigate for usable photos, and yet convenient to use. I have been a member of various photo sites on the net and have found it to be such a difficulty to find just the righ tphoto, only to discover the photographer just wanted to show it off and not actually let anyone use it. Some of these photo sites are now incorporating into their systems the ability to filter the searches so you get only free sharing photos in your search results. It will take some time for photographers to get used to these features and actually use them.
At Pix-O-Sphere we wanted to make this as easy as possible so you can save time. If anyone uses photos diligently on their blogs, they know how much time it takes to find just the right photo. A few features we added to make it easier are:
-Once you’re connected as a friend on Pix-O-Sphere, you can use any of your friend’s photos on your blog. This permission is written into out terms of use. So you don’t need to wait to get permission.
-You can customize your search by selecting ‘Friends Photos Only’. This saves even more time as you will have instant access to use those photos.
-Once you find a friend’s photo you want to use, simply click ‘Copy Photo to My Pix’. This makes a copy available to you to use. It’s hosted in YOUR account so it doesn’t zap your friend’s bandwidth limit. If they delete their photo, you still have it and it won’t disappear from your blog. AND their credit stays WITH the photo and is coded into the photo HTML that you use to insert it on your blog.
Example:
When you scroll your cursor over the photo you’ll see a ‘flyout’ window with the photo information. When you click on it, it takes you to my album and shows you the photographer and you can get connected to them.
We have so much more to share with you about how we are creating this site to be streamlined to make your blogging faster and easier. I hope you’ll come by and join, it’s free!
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Sisterlisa
Lisa (Sisterlisa) blogs at The HomeSpun Life
and is a contributor at The Homeschool Post.
She enjoys blogging, photography, and cooking.
Her homeschooling family is active in their
community and enjoys traveling with friends and family.
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