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Creating a blog involves multiple elements. Aside from your core content, you need images to support it. Pictures add variety and interest to an otherwise text-heavy page. As a blogger, you need to be discerning on what image you will use on your site. You can’t simply throw in pictures without much thought. It should be consistent with your content and brand. It should be striking and relevant at the same time. To help you with that, here are some guidelines you can follow when choosing images for your blog.

Showcase high quality images. By high quality we mean sharp images showing clear, crisp details and bright colors. Your photos should have good exposure or lighting. Blurry and grainy photos should never be seen in your blog. Remember that the quality of your images is reflective of the quality of your blog. It should also have good composition. This involves the positioning of the subject in the photo. Your image will be more attractive if you will follow the rule of thirds composition.

Size matters. Bloggers tend to make the mistake of either placing an overly hi-res image that takes too long to load or a low-res image that loads fast but poor in quality. You need to know the best image size for your site. Web designers usually recommend 500 pixels in 300dpi (dots per inch) to give them leeway to resize the image. The best resolution for web images is 72dpi. You need to take into consideration that more users are browsing the web via mobile devices. Thus, you have to provide the appropriate image size without compromising its quality.

Show emotions. Nothing connects best to a reader than photos of actual people showing varied emotions. They need to make-eye contact with your reader to keep them engaged. Active photos like people laughing, talking, or running provide energy compared to stationary or passive images. Danny Groner, manager of blogger partnerships and outreach for Shutterstock, suggests capturing moments the way photojournalists do. It is often candid yet it depicts compelling human emotions.

Support your content. This is the main reason why you put images in your blog. Images are meant to complement your blog’s content. Your readers should not be distracted by your image, instead it should draw them all the more to your content. The photo you choose should help visualize the point you are trying to convey. Your image also sets the tone for your brand so you need to make it as consistent as possible—from placement to color scheme. A good example is Viper Chill which constantly uses a black and white faceless cartoon figure placed at the rightmost corner of its blogs.

There are many sites where you can get free high quality images. We will discuss this thoroughly in our next blog along with the use of copyrighted images. You can also use photos that you took yourself. That way, it will be original and more tailor fit to your blog. It will also save you a whole lot of time from searching the web for images. Choosing images is all about quality and relevance. Just keep those things in mind and your options will be narrowed significantly.

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