Author: Deb M

Searching Out Stock Photos

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Does the cost of stock photography sometimes leave you reeling? Join the club! I’ve been shopping for and using stock photos for over 25 years and the price tag can leave me speechless on occasion.

While cost is very often what sends people hunting for free or cheaper sources of stock photography, there’s another reason that becomes bigger as time goes on — lack of choice. Have you noticed the same pics showing up on multiple paid sites? Me too. There’s a particular coffee cup, for example, following me from 123RF to Dreamstime, Bigstock to Canstock, Shutterstock to Deposit and back again.

So I go hunting for something that doesn’t look like the same picture everyone else is using on their content about the same topics. And even if I don’t see them everywhere, shots on the major sites can be perfectly fine but … predictable. Technically good, of course, but safe, cookie cutter … boring.

Not surprising then that we attempt to escape high cost, repetitiveness and blandness by Googling phrases like “free stock photos” or “hi-res free photos.”

Only then we find out how bad some of the “free stock photo” offerings are. Well, maybe not so shocking if you subscribe to the “you get what you pay for ” school of thought. But even taking that into account, some of them are breathtakingly bad. Luckily there are increasingly good places to find high quality, absolutely free stock photos.

All the sites below offer free high-resolution photos under a Creative Commons Zero (CC0) license which means:

  • you can copy, adapt or distribute the images for either commercial or personal use without requiring creator consent.
  • you can’t claim ownership or resell them as is.

No purchase, permission, or attribution* required. Continue reading “Searching Out Stock Photos” →

In-Person Meetings in the Age of COVID-19

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Video conferencing is great – and I suspect we will be using it more and more even after we get through the current crisis. That said – in the same way that not all jobs can be done remotely, not all meetings can be done that way indefinitely. At some point – probably before a vaccine is available but when R rates are down – physical meetings of some kind will be needed so there will need to be some thought about how to safely hold them.

I’m deliberately using the word meeting to differentiate it from an event or gathering since – at least in my opinion – event and gathering imply a larger scale, less controlled attendance. Events and gatherings will be, we can assume, much further down the road. But meetings – which for the purposes of this piece are invite-based, agenda-driven functions for work or organisational reasons – may well be needed sooner and they cannot be arranged or managed as they used to be.

Everything must now be arranged with an added awareness of COVID-19. This is the fact that underpins everything you, as a meeting or event organiser will do: There is a risk that attendee might – unwittingly – expose others to the COVID-19 virus. Clustered exposure can lead to hot spots and localised spikes – and for meetings where attendees come from any distance, broader spikes.

So, these are some steps you may wish to take: Continue reading “In-Person Meetings in the Age of COVID-19” →

The Socially Distanced Workplace

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One of the recurring themes in a lot of ‘what does the COVID-19 workplace look like’ pieces is ‘work from home, work from home, work from home.’

I work from home. I love working from home. I know lots of people who love it and lots of people who don’t like it at all. I’m also aware that lots of jobs that can’t be done entirely or even partially from home. So, let’s set aside working from home for a moment and talk about what the COVID-19 workplace looks like when it’s … well, at the workplace.

Well, it looks social distanced.

Yup, this is going to be part of the workplace workday long-term and there is no getting around it. On the assumption that we’re all operating to at least the WHO recommended standards (1 metre between people) or more (most places in the UK are working at a two-metre standard) – how do we do that?

Continue reading “The Socially Distanced Workplace” →

Remote Working: It’s Not Just Emailing from a Coffee Shop

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How hard can remote working be? Well, if you are only doing it for a few weeks, not very.

But if you are planning to make it the operational norm for your organisation – the shift from traditional ways of working to remote working can be more complicated than you think.

Mind you, this is all off the top of my head so it doesn’t actually get into the true nitty gritty. Just makes – I hope – the point – that this isn’t something that large organisations (and even most medium size operations – can simply flip a switch on and have it work straight out of the box.

Continue reading “Remote Working: It’s Not Just Emailing from a Coffee Shop” →

Winter City Break: Rome

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If it’s February, then it is Winter City Break time. As our city break to Porto (booked via British Airways holidays) last year had been superb, we decided to see what BA had to offer this year and this time we chose Rome.

Once in every trip to Rome, there is a moment when it feels like antiquities suddenly appear out of nowhere. You are walking along and you turn a corner and WHAM – there it is with no warning. On this trip, that moment was the Theatre of Marcellus.

I’d been to many times but it was all new to ModParlPhotos. We selected a hotel near enough to all the key spots to remain walk-able but also one that wasn’t quite in the middle of it all. When we are done for the day, we are done.

So, once again, everything booked in a single go via the BA holidays website – flights (BA), car service (TMTS Rome) and hotel (Hotel Glam Rome). Continue reading “Winter City Break: Rome” →