For the next post in the Blogging 101 for Pastors series, I need to talk about photos.

There are tons of tutorials out there in cyberspace on posting photos to blogs. (See some of those links below.

But what I want to do here is give you some practical tips, do's and don'ts, and thoughts on using photos in blog spots.

As a beginning blogging pastor, I would not spend a lot of time worrying about using photos in your blog posts, unless you're an avid photographer, own a digital camera and already take photos on a daily or weekly basis anyway.

So here are my bullet-point thoughts on photos:

• Photos CAN help draw readers into your blog posts, but aren't essential

• The best subjects are people (assuming you have their permission to post)

• The second best subject are just good photos -- with good composition, lighting, etc. See any decent magazine for examples of "good photography"
  

• One photo per post is enough

• Don’t overdo photos (see previous) … if they match your content and are easy to find, use them; if not, don’t

• Bad photos will taint good content

• Don’t kill yourself trying to get a photo for a post. Photos are nice, but not necessary, in my opinion. I’ve used them sparingly. Most people are more interested in your content (unless you're just an outstanding photographer!)

• Some pastors are amateur/pro photographers and thus blog more photos than others. Check out Steve McCoy's Phriday Photos feature as a great example of this.
  

• Don't use copyrighted photos without permission

Photo specifics:

• Size – I’d say keep them about 250 pixels or less at 72 dpi.
• Format – Generally, JPGs for photos, GIFs for most graphics

Photo-editing programs:

• Adobe Photoshop -- This is an expensive software, but none other comes close to its awesome-ness (Is that a word?). There are other scaled down versions of Photoshop, like Photoshop Elements, but I am not familiar with them enough to tell you either way.
• Hello -- A free Google image editing program. Here's a tutorial on using it with Blogger.
• Gimp -- Another free program

Two of my favorite photo sites:

• stock.xchng -- Free with registrations, some limits on certain photos
• IStockPhoto -- This is an incredible site for not just web stuff, but promotional materials and sermon illustrations, etc ... email me and I'll "refer" you -- you get 3 credits, I get 5 bucks

A couple more sites to find photos:

• Open Photo
• Flickr: Creative Commons
• Creative Commons Search

Here's some other posts on photos and blogging:

• An Introduction to Using Images on Blogs -- An outstanding, in-depth tutorial post
• Finding Photos For Your Blog
• Using Photos in Your Posts
• Where Can You Find Good Images?
• Go to Digital Photography School for FREE -- Darren Rowse has an outstanding digital photography blog where you can hone your photo skills
• Blogger's FAQ on Photos
• Blogger's 'How do I Post Picture' Help Post
  

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