A well chosen and placed photograph can really add impact and meaning to a post or page in WordPress. With the advent and continued growing popularity of the Creative Commons standard back in 2002, there is a wealth of imagery to draw upon for those bloggers that don’t have a media budget or their own photographic skills.  One common requirement of Creative Commons licenses and other usage models is “Attribution”. The Creative Commons license defines Attribution as “You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).” Additional guidelines may apply so check carefully, particularly in business/commercial use.

As a Content Management System, WordPress has a built in tools for creating Captions (sometimes called cut-lines) on the fly that can be a useful way to insert Attribution information.  When using the “Add an Image” tool from your Visual Editor you may insert plain text or HTML to the “Caption” field which will automatically be formatted and inserted as a caption beneath your photo once inserted into the post. This information is even stored in your WordPress Media Library so you won’t have to re-add it if you use the photograph again in the future.

If you aren’t satisfied with the Captions created, consider modifying your Theme’s styles.css where nearly any HTML/CSS is possible.

If you primarily use Flickr for your photography stock, you are really in luck.  A great plugin called Photo Dropper exists that adds a new tool to your WordPress Visual Editor toolbar.  This tool allows you to search the vast collection of Flickr images by keyword from within your own WordPress site and then it automatically detects the author and their usage policy, inserting it as a caption when you place the image in your post or page.
 
[youtube width=”500″ height=”405″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFp55po88kI[/youtube]  

Additional Information:

Name: Photo Dropper

Author: Unknown

Discussion: http://wordpress.org/tags/photo-dropper?forum_id=10

Need help implementing this plugin in your WordPress site?  Contact us for our professional services.  We can also provide support & expertise in convenient “blocks” to suit your short and long term needs.

Special thanks to Jascha for inspiring this article with his question asking for a way to do photography attribution with WordPress.