How to properly attribute photos in blog posts.

I have been struggling to find a quick and easy way, or a perferred format for crediting images that I use in my blog posts. After some searching, I stumbled upon these guidelines from +Creative Commons:

Examples of attribution

Here is a photo. Following it are some examples of how people might attribute it.
8256206923 c77e85319e n.jpg

This is an ideal attribution

Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco” by tvol is licensed under CC BY 2.0
Because:
Title? “Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco”
Author? “tvol” – linked to his profile page
Source? “Creative Commons 10th Birthday Celebration San Francisco” – linked to original Flickr page
License? “CC BY 2.0” – linked to license deed

This is a pretty good attribution

Photo by tvol / CC BY
Because:
Title? Title is not noted (it should be) but at least the source is linked.
Author? “tvol”
Source? “Photo” – linked to original Flickr page
License? “CC BY” – linked to license deed

This is an incorrect attribution

Photo: Creative Commons
Because:
Title? Title is not noted.
Author? Creative Commons is not the author of this photo.
Source? No link to original photo.
License? There is no mention of the license, much less a link to the license. “Creative Commons” is an organization.

Best practices for attribution by Creative Commons is licensed under CC BY 3.0

Comments

5 responses to “How to properly attribute photos in blog posts.”

  1. tressalynne Avatar

    I’ve been struggling with how to explain and demonstrate this to students in a blogging class I’m teaching. Your post is the final piece of the puzzle, so thank you for sharing!

    1. Peter G McDermott Avatar

      I’m so glad you found it helpful!

      1. tressalynne Avatar

        Just FYI, I reference your post in my new post, Peter: Blogging, Copyright & How to Attribute Images http://budurl.com/2rxr 🙂

  2. […] you found a usable image but aren’t sure exactly how to properly attribute the photo? This blog post (by Peter McDermott) does a great job of explaining and […]

  3. […] you found a usable image but aren’t sure exactly how to properly attribute the photo? This blog post (by Peter McDermott) does a great job of explaining and […]

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