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Inspiration Board Etiquette?

I am a new blogger. I want to offer brides in western North Carolina resources for planning weddings in a rural environment. To this end, I want to primarily use images from local vendors.

Unfortunately, background is in academics. Academics are commonly concerned with copyright violations and I am routinely terrified to re-post images from photographer blogs with "all rights reserved" images.

I have contacted a few vendors asking for permission to repost and have gotten a generally warm response. HOWEVER, one photographer want to vet the posts where I use his images. This has raised a bit of a red flag for me. Such an arrangement is find for now, but as my blog (hopefully) grows, such a vetting process will become unwieldy and slow down my blogging process.

What exactly is the etiquette for posting images to inspiration boards and reposting images from planner and photographer websites. I was under the impression that bloggers like lots of links back to their blogs, but some planners and photographers seem to want to restrict how and where their images are used.

Because one of my primary goals is to support my local economy and provide brides with local resources and beautiful inspiration, I need to form a relationship with local vendors. But I also need to be able to post quickly. Once the wedding season is in full swing, I am afraid I will wait weeks for a vendor to give me the OK to use images from her blog.

Please advise, and share with me your process for posting blog images and inspiration boards.

Thanks a million!

Christie

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Permalink Reply by Christie O. on February 28, 2010 at 8:33am

Ah yes. It makes perfect sense for me to go ahead and build trust with local vendors now so that later they know that I will use their images with respect and to highlight their best work. Thanks for that tip!

Also, am I to understand that as long as I am not making money, and that I have the common courtesy to link back, that I can use any images from other in my posts and inspiration boards? (Mine is not a commercial blog. It is a personal blog. I don't even run Google Ad Sense on it.)

I don't mean to put too fine a point of this, but I do not want to make egregious errors and damage my reputation as a blogger.

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Permalink Reply by Shiny Orb on March 1, 2010 at 10:56am

I am also very sensitive to this issue. My company's blog will always try to post images or inspiration boards for our posts. However, I'm in a slightly different business from you so I know I have permission to use all the images in the inspiration boards. We do have other posts with guest bloggers and in order to use other people's images, we always ask in advance. Typically, like you said, people have been very receptive. Still, it does take time, which means we start to queue up our blog posts in advance. We also try to ask people to email the images to us so if anything happens, we do have a paper trail where people have explicitly indicated permission. We contact our vendors after we have posted and generally, people were happy. One person asked us to change some wording in a byline after we published but we were fine with changing it. Finally, in spme posts, we just need some token image. For those, I usually look in wikimedia commons for CC Attribution or no copyright licenses.

Sounds like for you, a blanket permission slip would work best but I think it's understandable that photographers might be reluctant to give blanket permission. Many photographers have their own blogs. It's possible that you can arrange something where you repost a limited number of images from their blog posts with links back to their website or original blog entry.

Hurray for people in support of respecting copyright! :)

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Permalink Reply by Christie O. on March 1, 2010 at 11:27am

Thank you so much for your valuable perspective. So often blogging seems like a spur-of-the-moment thing, but I am beginning to see that it is not. I am fast discovering that blogging, especially wedding blogging, is about relationships. What a fabulous opportunity to support my local community. Again thank you for your encouragement and perspective.