Story Photos

The Absolute Necessities You HAVE to Know About Using Images

A very short tutorial on putting images in your Medium stories (only read the first section)

Want to put an image in your story? Great, you really should. Here is how to do it at a basic, intermediate and advanced level.

You only need to read as far as the basics. You could publish stories on Medium until the end of time using the basics.

Basic Level

Don’t want to spend a ton of time worrying about image copyrights? Want to make sure that ANY publication will accept your image? Maybe you are newer to Medium or aren’t super tech savvy? You can add an image in seconds. It should be from Unsplash and the caption needs to look exactly like this:

Or you can use a picture you took with your own camera and the caption needs to look exactly like this:

How do you do that? For the first option, click on the “+” sign in your Medium story editor and then click on the magnifying glass button. Type in a search word. You will be presented with picture options; pick one and you are done! Unsplash automatically captions the photo correctly so that it looks like the above screen capture. Yay!

For the second option, click on the “+” sign in your Medium story editor and then click on the camera button. Find the image on your phone or computer and select it. There will be gray placeholder text below the image in the Medium editor. Click on the placeholder text and type this, “Photo by Author”. Done; your image caption will look like the above screen capture. Nice! (If you don’t see the gray placeholder text, you need to hover your cursor over the photo and click on it.)

That’s it. Basic level mastered. Do this every single time with every image in your stories. Never worry for a second about image copyrights, or whether a publication will reject your story based on the image captioning. Boom!

Intermediate Level

You have been around the block at Medium now, or maybe you want to some more image options and you up for just a bit more effort.

Here we go. The most important thing to know is that you have permission to use the photo. At the intermediate level that means any photo from a website that offers a blanket license for free use. That means the website is designed specifically for displaying pictures that you can take and use. Examples are Pexels, Pixabay and ReShot.

You should be able to easily find a disclaimer on the website that says something to the effect of: “All images are licensed for free use for anyone to use for personal or commercial purposes.”

When the picture appears in your story the caption should say: “Image by [Artist that took photo] on [Website you got it from]”. Or you could say: “Photo by [Artist that took photo] from [Website you got it from]”. Those are your two options. Like this:

To do this, download the photo from the free-use site. Click the “+” button in your Medium editor and select the camera button. Find the picture on your computer and select it. You will see the gray placeholder text, click on the text and enter one of the above options. Then copy the URL of the photo on the site:

Next, highlight some of the text of the caption, preferably the artist, and then click on the hyperlink button:

Paste the copied URL into the hyperlink box and hit <Enter>. Done! Your photo will be properly captioned and link back to the artist source and the website that establishes your right to use the image commercially.

Photos you own, but don’t have a free-use commercial license

These could be pictures taken by friends, family or someone else where you own the photo personally.

Friend and family photos are easy. Just do your best to describe who took the photo and explain the relationship. Captions like, “Photo of Author taken by Sally Smith” (or “Photo of Author taken by my best friend Sally”).

If a stranger took the photo on your phone (like a family group pic at Disneyland), “Photo courtesy of Author”. Do your best to describe the circumstances in either the caption or your story: “Our entire family at Disneyland. Photo courtesy of Author”.

Photos where you purchase the rights for use

Sometimes you may have chosen to purchase a single image or a subscription to a site allowing use under a specific license. For example, you can purchase a single image or a subscription to Adobe Stock. When you do so, you can use the image as specified by the license.

Do your best to explain that in your caption. Language like, “Image licensed to Author for commercial use by Adobe Stock”. You should also consider linking back to Adobe Stock’s licensing terms page on their site using a hyperlink. Doing so helps eliminate any ambiguity about use of the photo.

Intermediate wrap up

Those are the ways to use and caption images at an intermediate level. In all these cases it is very clear the the author owns the images or has explicitly obtained permission for use. Any images that fall outside these definitions are in the “advanced” category because they expose the user to some element of risk by their use.

Most anyone should be able to publish 98% (or, really 100%) of their stories using either basic or intermediate photo levels.

Advanced Level

If you absolutely cannot find the correct photo under a free-use or explicit license for use in your stories, then you are in the advanced category because it may be unclear whether it is okay to use the image.

Examples of this are clip art, memes, charts, motivational quotes in storyboard form, or any photo downloaded from a website that doesn’t specifically state that it is okay for anyone to use their photos for personal or commercial use.

If you want to use an image that fits into one of these categories, please read my story just below on why we should provide citation for images we use first. If you are in this “advanced” realm, it is worth your time to consider your actions carefully.

If you absolutely feel that you must use a photo in this category and have accepted the potential risk, then your captioning should attempt to provide as much supporting information as possible so that the reader can be informed.

For example, some Creative Commons (CCo) images can be used by the public but have specific requirements such as attributing the photographer. Make sure you are clear on the uses allowed, follow the requirements and make your readers aware that you have done so.

Images featuring celebrities are especially tricky. While they might be public domain (meaning rights to the image itself have expired, or never existed), the individual in the picture could still object to your use. Do your best to explain in your caption why you feel this is a reasonable use of the photo.

Please keep in mind that if you are using images that fall into this advanced category, many publications within Medium will not accept your story as they may not want to expose the publication to any risks associated with your use of the image.

For the most part, unless your story just isn’t going to fly on its own without just that one special photo that is of sketchy legality, you are better off simply staying well in the bounds of the basic and intermediate categories.

But really, if you story isn’t going to make it without that photo, is it much of a story anyway?

If you liked this article, you may also like:

Timothy Key spent over 26 years in the fire service as a firefighter/paramedic and various fire chief management roles. He firmly believes that bad managers destroy more than companies, and good managers create a passion that is contagious. Compassion, grace and gratitude drive the world; or at least they should. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter, and join the mail list.