touchy subject

There was a two week span in there where I posted nothing at all. Partly, because I had very limited time on my hands, but the other reason was when I decided to blog, I wanted to source the images featured as best as possible. It can be very time consuming trying to find the original source of a photo, and when you're limited on time, but want to source properly, it makes it kinda difficult to put a good blog post together.

But even I was doing this in not the best format, meaning I would source to another blog or tumblr that featured the same picture, even though I knew it was not a photo that was original from that blog, but basically just a photo that the blogger found elsewhere.

There's been lots of discussion lately on giving credit where it's due, as in giving credit to everyone who made that photo possible from the stylist to the photographer to the publisher to the models, etc. I totally understand and completely agree it's the right thing to do. I would want my work credited to me as well.

If I'm able to provide every last person's name on a photo, I will. If I'm able to provide the original source (or the closest thing to it), then I will for sure link to it.  If I found that original source from another blog, then I'm going to link the blog I found it on.

You see, I think it's kinda wrong for me to post pretty pics on my blog all day and not once say where that pretty photo came from. Yes, I could (and I have) posted photo after photo that didn't belong to me, and while it makes a lovely post of pretty images, it was done without consideration of the original creators. That just didn't mix well with me. Also, I think it's pretty lazy on my part to say, this image is from pinterest or some tumblr. Duh?! Practicially every image is now on Pinterest, but Pinterest didn't create that image, but somebody did and that person (or persons) needs to be credited.

I recently saw the graphic below on Pinterest. I encourage you to follow the link and read it. It's a helpful way to use Google Images to locate the original source of an image. But let me warn you, it won't always lead directly to the original source. That's where you might have to do some homework and search the links provided to make sure it is the original source, or at least a source to who created the original image.

image source: The Graphics Fairy

Another great tool, that doesn't always work, but still is helpful when it does work is TinEye, it's a reverse image source. Most of the time I will do a search on both Google Images and TinEye and I'm bound to find the source for the image through either one. 

However, saying that, it still takes time and effort to search. I've spent up to forty minutes looking for the original source on some of the images I've posted.  This is why I no longer create posts with a constant stream of images. I want to post images with some integrity and if that means spending my available blogging time searching for an image and only posting one, two or three pictures on the post, then I will.

And I ask that you do one or two little things, if you would like to pin an image from my blog, click on the link(s) I provide and then pin the image from the link you're directed to. Not only will you now have the original source (or the closest thing to the original) in your pin collection, but you will have helped other pinners (who are sometimes also bloggers) in crediting the proper source as well. 

The other little thing you could do, if you're pinning from other blogs or tumblrs you follow, please click on that specific post title and then pin the image you like. For example, say you like the outfit of the girl in the red pants from my last post, then you would click on that title "To Crop or Not?" which would direct you to that specific post only, thus you would be pinning from the permalink and not off the blogs front page, which changes as often as the blog updates its posts.

I say this only because it's a great source of frustration to like an image, be directed to the main page of a blog or tumblr, only to see that the image I like is not there, because it's been buried by post after post, rendering it pretty darn impossible to find. (But most tumblrs are not the original source of images anyway. However, there are a few out there who will provide a link to a source, which may or may not be the original source. Anything helps when you're searching for an image.)

So yes, while this post is low on pretty images, it was something I wanted to get off my blogger chest. I'm hoping no one is offended, but instead feels motivated to blog (or pin) giving the best image credit possible.