If you’ve been reading this site for a long time, you may notice that some older posts have disappeared, while others suddenly have brand new illustrations. And quite a few now have no images at all.
That’s deliberate.
For the last while I’ve been conducting a complete audit of the site’s image library. Considering this website first appeared in 1999, that’s turned into a rather larger project than I expected.
One thing that surprised me was discovering that images can become…musty.
The words in many of those older posts have aged perfectly well. The illustrations, on the other hand, often hadn’t. Visual styles change, just as web design, typography and photography do. Images are now bigger, clearer, and visually different.
Some of the images I’d chosen years ago now looked dated, while others were simply the closest thing I could find at the time.
The Online World Has Changed
More importantly, the online world has changed enormously.
Twenty years ago, if I wrote about a television series or a film, I’d often use a publicity still. If I discussed an author or actor, I’d use a promotional photograph. Like many bloggers at the time, I assumed that because I was reviewing, discussing or enthusiastically recommending their work, that comfortably fell under “fair use.”
That wasn’t an unusual way to think back then. It was simply part of blogging culture.
Today, the landscape is very different. Search technology—including AI-powered search—can surface an image buried deep inside an archive just as easily as one published yesterday. They can also unearth images that are not actually used in any posts, but still linger in an image archive.
At the same time, copyright expectations, licensing requirements and the practical realities of maintaining a long-running website have all evolved.
And it isn’t just publicity photos. Travel photographs, historic images, book covers, landscapes, architecture…virtually every photograph on the web deserves a second look if you’re maintaining an archive that stretches back more than two decades.
In many ways, archives have stopped being archives. Twenty years ago, a blog post slowly disappeared beneath newer posts and was rarely seen again. Today, search engines and AI search treat a post from 2003 almost exactly the same as one published yesterday. Every page is potentially current again.
Even Paid Stock Images are Problematic
Even licensed stock photography can become surprisingly complicated. Some of the stock agencies I used years ago have reorganized their libraries or removed older images altogether, taking the original licence records with them. After twenty-odd years, proving where every image came from can become a project in itself. And if the original licence record has disappeared over the years? That becomes my problem to solve.
So I’ve made a decision.
Some older posts that relied upon images I can no longer confidently verify have been retired. The Aerial Photos series that I was in the middle of writing and publishing has also gone, because it’s rather difficult to discuss a photograph you can no longer display.
The Women in History series is changing, too. Historical photographs of the people involved will gradually disappear, even where those photographs remain widely available. I’ll see if a good AI image generator can create a close resemblance, if I feel a portrait would enhance the story.
Others are being refreshed with new illustrations created specifically for the article.
Going Forward
Going forward, you’ll see many more original AI-generated illustrations on this site. They let me create images that actually match the stories I’m telling instead of settling for “close enough.” They give the site a more consistent visual style, and they free me to spend my time writing instead of maintaining an image audit trail that stretches back to the last century.
Most of the older writing-related posts have also disappeared. Those topics now have a better home over at The Productive Indie Fiction Writer, where they’re easier to find and maintain alongside newer material.
You may also stumble across the occasional post with no illustration at all, or one where the formatting looks a little…creative. Those posts are waiting their turn. With more than twenty-five years of posts and pages to work through, this cleanup is going to take a while.
I suspect you’ll see the same thing happening on many long-running blogs and author websites over the next few years. The web has changed, and those of us who’ve been here since the early days are adapting along with it.
The goal hasn’t changed, though.
I still want this to be a place that’s enjoyable to visit, worth reading, visually interesting, and sustainable for many years to come.
Now available for preorder:
Camlann
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Even More Time Kissed Moments
Before, After, Always
Kiss Across Time Box Three