flickr – Rosepoint Publishing

Instagram vs WordPress – Want More From Your Pics?

Rob Moses at Rob Moses Photography started his blog about the same time as I, was one of the first to follow me, and I’ve followed with interest his beautiful and unique pictures. I’ve mentioned him before. He takes a lot of pictures; a lot of different types of pictures. Street photography and city skylines are some of his most favourite things to shoot, but he also finds himself shooting more landscapes than he thought he would.

Most recently, he ran a rant about Instagram vs WordPress which I found so exactly echoed my own sentiments, as well as recent discussions with many of my own followers, that I thought I’d share with you. No doubt you agree. Instagram is too much fun, gets too much attention, and so rewarding that’s it’s difficult to get back to the WP blog subject of the day. For me, of course, the time is spent in crafting “bookstagrams.” (And you have my invitation to follow my efforts in the widget column on the right or @rosepointpub.)

For me, Instagram is an attractive alternative to either Pinterest or Facebook. The two image-sharing platforms were both released approximately 2010 and I’ve yet to really figure out Pinterest. According to Digital Guide, there were approximately 400 million Instagrammers to 100 million Pinteresters back in 2016. Currently, there are almost 75 million WordPress sites out there with over 50% of those (or 37 million) on the free WordPress.com. There are articles on WP vs Tumblr, WP vs Squarespace and Instagram vs Flickr. (And I did try Flickr.) But Instagram–and further–Bookstagram really caught my attention. Now that Instagram has the “story” capability, the ability to add dialogue has expanded dramatically. I love books and they make some gorgeous pictures and now stories (posts) as well!

Time is at such a premium–especially at my age–and I no longer have a full-time job. As jmeyersforeman noted in part, “I think both Instagram and WordPress have their purpose, as you said, Instagram is great for it’s immediacy, while WordPress gives you a longer format to explore topics and it takes time to develop those posts…we only have so much time in the day and we have to decide where we get the most reward for our time.”

Royalty Free Images? Beat Getty Images!

Embed from Getty Images

Pictures! I’ve touched on the subject before when I posted regarding Flickr and Creative Commons some time ago. The photo on the left above was embedded from Getty Images, and although Creative Commons has a wealth of public domain or free images to tap, Getty Images is getting my attention because of the ease with which their royalty free images can be embedded to your blog. Of course, with any site that offers royalty free images, there are details in the small print, which should not be over-looked for copyright details. Most simply want simple attribution. I chose that doggy picture because it reminded me so much of my own little puppy (now ten years old). In the meantime, I’ve found numerous free image sites. Most want sign-ups or subscriptions at the least.

So whom have I been playing with lately? These are my top six go to sites for Royalty Free pictures: Continue reading “Royalty Free Images? Beat Getty Images!”

Time To Learn About Flickr and Creative Commons Licenses

Days of research on the computer have left me blurry eyed with the dizzying array of hosts who would love to have you upload all your pictures large and small to their storage reservoirs. This, in the fervent hopes you’ll upgrade and get all that stuff off your own limited computer, laptop, tablet, and cell capacities. (Okay–there’s another Oxford comma!)

There is everything from MyCloud to ZipCloud and JustCloud. I signed up for the Box.com 10 gig free cloud storage for my files. These could comprise all kinds of files–including videos, financials, spreadsheets and taxes. My Dropbox is currently at 45% of 5.8 GB capacity. I take double pictures of everything–never sure the first will be acceptable. Because this is the digital age, I can take a gajillion pictures–(and do!). I never have to wait and they never have to be developed. I have the power of the “delete” button AND I need photos for my posts.

I like YouTube for video, and other than the one html file, the remainder of my “files” are photos. But I have not found one cloud that will store my html file unless it’s within a website.

I’m a senior: I need it simple.

My Weather Bug is programmed with at least seven locations, all of which when checked come with a beautiful background and usually have the photographer’s name and the notation “©[photographer] on flickr“. I’ve been looking at those pictures and wondering where in the world those were taken. But I keep seeing “Creative Commons” and “flickr”……

Great! Another photo storage host! Flickr will host up to a capacity of 1 TB. WHAT??! Not 5 gigs or 10 gigs–1 terabyte.

According to the internet: “One terabyte is one trillion (short scale) bytes. The unit symbol for the terabyte is TB.” Which is 1,000 gigs! Va Va Voom!

Waiting for the other shoe to drop, I signed up! Why not? I won’t be buying any more little flash drives, the last one of which I’d ordered from Amazon to back up all those files. It came apart after the third use.

You knew it’d get complicated somewhere though, right? Now we have the option of offering any of these photos through a Creative Commons license. There are attribution options out there. And many more photos to share! I love it and I’m sharing two I found today. Hope these have the proper licenses.