When an Image Doesn’t Feel Like It Belongs to the Words
To be honest, I’m not very comfortable using public images, especially the kind that are easy to grab from places like Pinterest or Unsplash. I do it sometimes (maybe) because, well, it’s convenient. You search, you find something that looks right, you save it, and that’s it. But almost every time, there’s this small feeling in the back of my head that goes, “Mmm, this isn’t really mine.”
And, I know how the internet works. Images get reposted endlessly, sources disappear, everything feels kind of “free to use” even when it technically isn’t. Pinterest in particular feels like a giant floating pile of beautiful things with no clear ownership attached to them anymore. But that’s exactly what makes me uneasy. I usually don’t know who made the image, when it was taken, or what the original context was. I just know it looks nice next to my text.
The problem is, my text is usually not just informational. A lot of what I write is personal: opinions, reflections, frustrations, things I actually thought about and spent time putting into words. So when I place a random image next to that, it feels... mismatched. The words are mine, the feelings are mine, but the visual is borrowed from someone I don’t know, from a situation I don’t understand, and from a context that has nothing to do with what I’m saying. It starts to feel less like a natural extension of the writing and more like decoration, almost like I’m dressing up my thoughts with someone else’s work.
Sometimes I even catch myself thinking, half-joking but also half-serious: “Andy, are you trying to look like a journalist now?” Because once you put an image next to a text, especially a photo, it quietly suggests documentation, reality, something that was actually there. But in many cases, that’s not what it is. It’s just an illustration, and not even a carefully chosen one. Just something that visually fills the space.
I guess what bothers me is not just copyright or professionalism, although those matter too. It’s more about honesty of representation. If I’m writing something that comes from my own head and my own experience, then attaching an unrelated visual feels like I’m adding weight that I didn’t really earn. It looks more serious, more “article-like,” but the image itself doesn’t actually support what I’m saying. It just sits there and silently borrows authority from being a photo.
And to be fair, I get why people do this. The internet is visual. Posts with images get more attention. Pages without visuals feel empty, unfinished, or not worth clicking. There’s a quiet pressure to always include something, anything, just so the layout looks complete. Sometimes I give in to that too. I won’t pretend I’m perfectly consistent about this.
Still, I keep coming back to the same feeling: when the writing is personal, I’d rather let it stand on its own, or at least pair it with something that doesn’t pretend to represent a real person, a real event, or a real moment that I know nothing about. A simple illustration, a neutral photo, or even no image at all feels more honest to me than a borrowed aesthetic that doesn’t belong to the story I’m telling.
Maybe this is a small and overly sensitive concern. On most platforms, nobody cares. People scroll, they react, they move on. But on a personal website, where I’m not really chasing clicks or algorithmic approval, this kind of thing starts to matter more to me. It’s less about performance and more about whether what’s on the page actually reflects what I wanted to say, and how I wanted to say it.
So, I still use public images sometimes. I probably will again. But every time I do, I pause for a second and think: “Does this image actually belong here, or am I just using it because it makes the post look more like what the internet expects a post to look like?” And honestly, I don’t always like the answer.
