Blog Photos

I really enjoy blog posts with photos. It is nice to not only read about what is going on with someone, but to be able to see it as well. As both a blog reader and blog writer, I appreciate that long passages of text can be really boring from a visual perspective, though as with books, if the writing is engrossing enough, you won't miss the pictures (not that I always manage to be that engrossing! LOL).

Some bloggers post photos with every entry, which I find pretty amazing. Many of those blogs belong to amateur (or professional) photographers, or the theme of the blog makes it more prone to "needing" photos in every post, such as a scrapping or cooking blog. But there are some other bloggers that use stock images when they post, if they do not have any of their own photos to share. Now, I'm not knocking this practice. I will admit that many of the photos are beautiful or funny or otherwise entertaining.

So I guess my question is this: for posts where I would usually have only text, would you prefer that I go out looking for some stock photos to accompany the entries? Or is it okay with you for it to be just text? I'm thinking specifically of longer posts (like this one). I don't think anyone minds short bits of text going photo-less. I do consciously try not to go more than a few posts without photos, but sometimes, there just aren't photos to add, like the several consecutive posts about not closing on the house. I don't know, maybe I could have just posted more photos of the house? Since this is my personal blog, I feel like most of the photos should be mine (or borrowed/given to me, like Dad's shots of the gymnastics or Gina's from the birthday party). I do sometimes use images I did not take that are related directly to what I am posting about, like product photos from websites to show a recent purchase. I realize part of the solution is for me to take more pictures, but that wouldn't solve the problem of posts like this one. I guess I could use a stock photo of a camera or photographer in the process of taking a photo, or maybe an empty frame to "illustrate" the theme of no picture? I just think I would feel strange and almost dishonest posting some random picture on my blog *just* so it will have more than plain text.

Your thoughts? Would you prefer all lengthy posts to have images of some kind, even if they aren't mine or expressly related to the post? Or are you satisfied with blocks of text when there really is no relevant photo to post?

Currently feeling: ponderous