Pictures

What should I do to get more pictures for my blog?

So, maybe you've noticed I'm less likely to illustrate my post with a picture than to offer up the thousand words it's supposed to be worth. Even if I've been out on a photo shoot I seldom capture things that would go with my text.

I'd kind of like to be one of those bloggers who has a picture or two every time. But I'm not sure how to manage that. If I were one of those "mommy bloggers" I'd have pictures of my precious tots doing cute things, but I'm not. And I don't travel with an iphone, snapping as I go.... Besides which, mostly I'm writing about ideas, not concrete things, so sometimes it's hard to imagine the apt image.

I used to harvest appropriate images from various places off the web, but even when I thought an picture I'd found was fair game I'd often discover that someone else - the image owner? my keepers here at Blogger? thought otherwise. They'd yank it away some weeks or months later and  leave an awkward hole. (If I saved those pics to my hard drive and then uploaded them on my own, no one would be able to snatch them out of my hand. But does that seem a bit more nefarious?)

Can you recommend strategies for finding engaging and ethical-to-use image sources to illustrate my blog? Any technical, ethical, or aesthetic tips would be welcome.