Chris WiegmanLast week a friend of mine got a copyright troll letter for some images they had on their personal blog. While I don’t want to share more of their story, and they admitted they messed up, it really got me thinking about the images on this site and if they’ve been worth it.
Where I got my images
For as long as this site has been around I did pay for the images I used. I’ve still got more than 100 credits on Depositphotos.com from a great sale they had a few years back and I’ve used them along with other legit image sources and my own images.
I have a habit of attracting issues even when I try to do the right thing so making sure every image I have on this site is legally used has been a big concern. I’m probably the only person I know who was paying for images in 2003 when I first started blogging but I do believe that artists deserve compensation for their work as well as I simply never wanted to get on the wrong side of any trolls.
Why I’m removing many images anyway
Even though all those 3rd-party images were legitimate I took the time this weekend to remove them from my site anyway. Today I’m happy to say that every image on this site is something I created either as a screenshot or with my own camera. Sure there are a few exceptions such as the fair use of logos and whatnot where appropriate but all the filler images are gone and I think that’s a good thing.
As nice as most of those images were they simply didn’t any value to the content on this site. Using tools such as https://digitalbeacon.co revealed that more than 1/2 of this site’s bandwidth went to those images, which I always used as featured images on top of each post even when they simply didn’t fit the content.
Add in the ever looming threat that, even though they were legal, someone might try to claim otherwise anyway and it just seemed like a good idea to take them down.
My new image policy
Going forward I’ll still use images, where appropriate, but they won’t be automatically added to every post and any image I do use will need to be created by me.
The purpose of this site is, first and foremost, my own creative outlet. It’s time I take that up a notch by extending it to the images as well. Not only do I think that will make the most sense on most of my posts but it will also, at least to some extent, reduce the footprint of this site and to me that is always a win.