Use This Brew To Pick Photos For Your Self-Published Articles

Photo taken by author

With online self-publications (including Medium) on the rise — the importance of picking good photos to accompany your articles has skyrocketed. The photos that accompany your story are important because they set the mood for your article — and also help you get more clicks on your articles from people who are interested in reading it.

To get a flavor of what I mean, take a look at the thumbnail image for this piece, which I used for my article “I Abandoned My Home Because of COVID-19.” (See image below) I wanted to convey the sense of loss, and the photo of the broken exit sign on the floor of dark basement floor effectively communicated that idea in one picture. I got that spectacular photo by searching on Unsplash, a website that provides royalty-free photos. (I also use Creative Commons for the same purpose — but I often have more luck on Unsplash.)More recently I wrote an article about how a lot of people I didn’t know had been contacting me with weird questions about the articles I have written on Medium. I wanted to convey the sense of creepiness, so I did a search for the word “creepy” on Unsplash. The image I used conveyed an appropriate sense of creepiness — as you can see by reading the article “What I Do When Strangers Contact Me On Medium.”