How to Use Flickr Photos on Your Hubs

This Hub is for DzyMsLizzy, a new Hubber with a passion for pussycats and a penchant for poetry. One of the challenges for poets on HubPages is that poems are usually short - which makes them much less likely to be found by search engines. Luckily, there is a solution. By combining a generous helping of photos and a closing sentence or two, it's possible to create quite a substantial Hub from a short poem.

There are several free stock photo sites out there, but I don't use them these days - because Flickr.com provides all the photos I could ever need.

There are some lovely pictures on stock photo sites - but not if you're looking for something outside the mainstream. Whereas on Flickr, you'll find lots of quirky personal shots, and plenty of photographs by professionals too, on almost any subject you can think of.

And Flickr photos are not only easy to use, it gives you a chance to interact with the photographers if you wish, and even get more publicity for your Hub or blog.

You can't use just any old picture on Flickr. Some photos are "All Rights Reserved" (which means you can't use them at all) and others have restrictions on their use. To find the photos you can use on HubPages or your blog/website, you need to do an Advanced Search. To get to the Advanced Search screen:

1. Open the Flickr.com website.
   
2. Leave the search box empty and click on "Search"
   
3. On the next page you should see "Advanced Search" under the "Search" button. Again, leave the search box blank and click on "Advanced Search". That will take you to the Advanced Search page.

Or, you can cheat and follow this link: http://www.flickr.com/search/advanced/?

Now to do an Advanced Search:

• Enter a word or phrase to describe what you're looking for (in Ms Lizzy's case, probably "cats")
• Scroll all the way down and you'll see a section titled "Creative Commons". Tick "Only search within Creative Commons-licensed content" AND "Find content to use commercially".

Why commercial? Because if you're writing to make money on a blog or Hub, it's classed as commercial - even if you're an amateur.

By the way, you "tick" by clicking!

Now click the "Search" button and voila, you should have a host of photographs to browse through. To look at a photo full-size, click on it. To go back to the gallery, use the "back" button in your browser.

First, you'll need to add some photo capsules to your Hub. Use one for each photo - it will make life easier if you ever want to edit your Hub.

Now back to Flickr. When you see a photo you like in the gallery, click on it and you'll go to the page where it's displayed full-size.

Here's where a lot of people make a mistake, and try to paste the URL of the page into the photo capsule. That won't work - you need to use the URL of the photo, which is different.

To upload the photo:

• Click on the photo to open the full-size version.
• Click on "view all sizes" in the top right hand corner
• Click on the size closest to your needs
• Right click and select "Copy Image Location"
• Open the HubPages photo capsule, select the "Import" tab and paste in the URL
• Add a caption

You're almost done, but there's one more step - and it's vital. As this photo is under a Creative Commons license, part of the deal is that you must let your readers know where you got the photo. You can do that by pasting the URL into the "Source" section of the photo, but there are other alternatives.

There are a couple of ways you can include a photo credit. You could simply put it in the caption - but in my opinion, that's rude, because the caption can't be a link. People can see who the photographer is but are unlikely to visit their other photos.

Since you're using their photo, it's much more courteous to give them the benefit of a backlink. As a Hubber, you understand the value of backlinks, don't you?

You can give them a backlink anywhere you like:

1. by pasting the URL in the "Source" field in the photo capsule itself
2. In the text next to or near the photo
3. at the end of your Hub

In the early days of HubPages, the "Source" link wasn't available, so all my early Hubs use the third version - which I've also used in this Hub.

There is one other way you can thank the photographer - but it's an extra, not a substitute for the acknowledgment on your Hub, which is compulsory. If you sign up for Flickr, you can leave a comment on the photo page, thanking the photographer for making the picture available and telling him/her that you've used it on your Hub. I've had some lovely conversations with photographers as a result, and been offered more photographs not published on Flickr.

There is another way to search for items on Flickr. It's a separate website called Flickrstorm.

All you have to do is click "advanced", enter your search term, select "for commercial use" in the drop-down box and click "search".

The advantage of Flickrstorm is that you can see a large version of the photos you like without leaving the gallery. Plus it remembers the photos you've looked at. When you find one you want to use, click the "open on Flickr" link and follow the usual instructions to upload the photo.

The downside is that it returns only a limited number of photos. I used it a lot at one time, but found that I was missing some great photos by not looking at the full search results available on Flickr itself.

If you're not technically minded, all this may sound fiddly at first - but as you get used to it, you'll find it gets faster and easier. Anyway, it's worth it to enrich your Hubs with some fabulous photos!

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All text copyright Marisa Wright.

Thank you to the following photographers for the photos on this Hub, which are published under Creative Commons Licence:

• Recubejim for cat in loo
• Piez for cuddling cats
• Gattou/Lucie for the grey green-eyed cat
  
• Tambako for the black and white stalker
• Rodrigo Basuare for the tiger cat