Where are the pictures?

As some may have noticed, when I began the blog a couple months ago, almost each and every post was accompanied by a picture. Sometimes the picture was of an individual discussed in the story, other times it was some bizarre, abstract thought I had that linked to some part mentioned in the blog (sort of a 'figure out what the heck the picture has to do with the post' game). But recently, the pictures have dropped to almost nil. There are a couple reasons. First, pictures take up memory. While my blog is a mere pup, I may do this for a long, long time. Might as well not establish the tradition now. If, in years to come, it's popular enough to justify more that would include room for endless numbers of picture posts, then fine. We'll wait and see.

Second, it takes time. Most of my posts are, quite frankly, written off the top of my head. If I have a second, I'll do a spell check. But they are usually something I noticed, think about, see, or read that I say 'that would be interesting', or 'I wonder if I'm the only one noticing this?' I sit down and type it out. Since I type around 75 to 80 words a minute, that takes a couple minutes tops. That's fine, since I'm not a full time blogger, or writer, or anything where spending hours at a blog would be justified. But add the element of the picture, and suddenly the amount of time spent per post increases exponentially.

Finally, I'm trying to gauge the success/failure of my blog. I have stats I can read to see how many are visiting. I can see where they come from. I notice that some of the visits are from folks who, apparently, saw a picture and clicked on it - the same way I do when I was looking for images. They weren't really 'visiting', they simply came here by accident. Maybe they liked what they saw. Maybe they're one of the repeat visitors. I just know that when I'm looking at a picture, there is only about once in every thousand clicks that I will bother to actually read the site in question. So it helps eliminate those who came by accident from those who came by topic or repeat business.

Oh, and there is the problem of copyrights. Most net images are probably safe to use on a blog. But I don't have time to get into the legal nitty-gritty, nor do I want to be blindsided in the future. If there is an image I think would really help the post, I may go ahead and go the extra mile. If the blog grows, and more people visit (and quite frankly, more comment - the visits are pretty impressive from what I can tell, but while quality counts for something, it would be nice to see more folks feel comfortable commenting, that's where I get to learn from others), then I might change. But until then, expect few if any pictures unless they are sure to be free of charge, are obviously adding to the blog, or are of my most wonderful wife and kids.