The other day Chris Brogan wrote a post about easy ways to improve your blog. One of his tips was to use photos to break up the text on your posts. A great tip, images can really add a lot of visual interest and help to drive a point home, too.

These days, most people have access to a digital camera and a Flickr account, so adding photos to your page is easy. But what about those times when you need a certain type of photo? For instance, right now here in Ottawa we are buried in about 6 feet of snow (still!), but I’m dreaming of Spring flowers. What if I want to add a nice picture of some daffodils to my post, but my own daffodils are buried in snow? Enter MorgueFile.

MorgueFile is a photo sharing site where amateur and semi-professional (and sometimes professional) photographers share their photos for anyone to use. Most of the time all they want in return is an email saying where you have used their photo. You can search on various topics and there are thousands of great photos to choose from.

Using MorgueFile to find a particular type of photo has more benefits than just prettying up your web pages, I’ve learned. It can also help to drive traffic to your blog.

The other day I posted about a special community I was once part of, and I went to MorgueFile to find the perfect photo. I found exactly what I was looking for in a photo by mindexpansi0n. Not only did I credit the photographer and provide a link to his MorgueFile pages, but I also dropped him a quick email to let him know I’d used his photo in my post. A few hours later, mindexpansi0n wrote me back and let me know that not only did he appreciate the credit, but he’d also subscribed to my blog!

Next time you are looking for that perfect photo, check out MorgueFile and support budding photographers by helping them to get their work out there. And you just may get some new blog visitors too!

Photo by ren from MorgueFile.

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