Where are the Photos?

It does seem a bit strange to write blog posts about scrapbooking and not include photographs.

As part of my research, I took photographs of every layout I was shown by respondents. I only have permission to share those photos with the chair of my dissertation. See, as part of university research involving people, you have to go through a strict approval process in order to reduce the likelihood of harm being done to study participants. Would sharing the photos cause them harm? Probably not, but there is always the chance a photograph could accidentally out someone as gay, shows them out having fun when they called in sick to work, or embarrasses them. This research was collected in 2008, and at that point in time, most people understood that if their friend or family took a photograph of them, it would stay fairly private. Today, we understand that our photographs will often end up on facebook or somewhere else online. The point, those layouts included photographs that were understood to remain fairly private by everyone involved.

My respondents could have given me permission to share these photos more widely. The problem with this is that I would have also had to obtain permission from every person who was photographed or represented in the layout. This isn’t an impossible task, just not one that was important enough for the research to pursue it. It was important for me to have the photographs (I also recorded the audio of our interviews) for further analysis.

So what are my alternatives?

I could always find layouts online that I could use to illustrate the points I am making in my posts, but I don’t think it is right to just pull layouts from other people’s sites without permission. Again, I could seek permission, but I really do not have the resources to devote to this task.

I could always just use other types of images that are free from copyright and do not require any permission to use. I’ve considered this, but I do not think that this would add anything except a decoration to these posts. I would rather spend the time on the written content rather than looking for a decoration for the post.

I have also considered soliciting layouts from readers that fit with the topic. I really like this idea, but am unsure that I can manage this, too. It would involve me, giving the topic to a creative team of sorts and then they create (or find) a layout that fits with the topic. Is this something readers would be interested in seeing? Would you be willing to participate in creating layouts for these posts? Should I start a creative team? Please comment below.