How Bloggers Can Legally Find Premium Images

Oct 13th, 2009 | By Huma Rashid | Category: Blogging, Copyright, Featured, Lead Article, Social Media, Web 2.0

Yesterday, October 12, 2009, WordPress released an exciting announcement about new developments for its users. WordPress is a popular blogging service that allows users two options: to host a template blog with WordPress.com or use individual programming skills to take advantage of the WordPress platform and host the blog elsewhere. Many legal bloggers use the WordPress.com or WordPress.org services, which allow users to create a multitude of unique, fully functional blogs.

On October 12, WordPress announced a new WordPress.com Shortcode feature that allows users to access and display millions of premium images from photo agencies around the world for free. And no worries, legal eagles: there won’t be any copyright infringement.

The service is called PicApp, and it’s an image search engine. When you search for images, a code appears on the right hand side marked specifically for WordPress users. Just take the code and copy-paste it into the body of your WordPress post, and when the post is published, the picture will appear.

Let’s play around with this a little, shall we?

Here is just one of the images you can use if you search for President Obama.

This is what we get when we search for, let’s say, Karl Lagerfeld. He’s a laughably insane man, but he sure does know what he’s doing. Amidst all the less than stellar moments at Fashion Week, he got in there and showed them all how it was done. His designs are immaculate and his talent immeasurable. Plus, they based Mugatu on him in the Zoolander movie, starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson. He was played by Will Ferrell.

Anyway, here’s Uncle Karl being Uncle Karl.

And….here’s something that comes up if you search for Disney.

Ugh. Okay, that’s just scary.

Musicals on ice aside, all the images found through PicApp are free to use and legally obtained, and there’s no caveat in the service agreement that WordPress is not responsible for possible copyright infringements. PicApp has its own deals with photographers and agencies for the images they display, and if you want additional details, please read the documentation in the support area.

This Shortcode opens up new possibilities for bloggers struggling to find relevant pictures of good quality that are protected by the creative commons license. So get to blawging!