Discussions

Click here to read Class 1. 

Okay. I will readily admit that when it comes to this first step, I’m probably the wrong person to opine since I pretty much cover the entire surface of my website with photos. We work cattle? I post twenty photos. I cook cobbler? Thirty photos. And don’t even get me started on how many photos I post of my dog Charlie.

I like photos. What can I say?

While you really don’t need to aspire to my bizarre level of photo mania, I do think having some nice ratio of photos-to-text helps any website. Things were probably different back at the onset of the blogosphere, when blogs were more about daily text journal entries, but things are so visually-geared nowadays, I think people need to be both intellectually and visually stimulated or the chances that they’ll click the red “X” are greater.

Did I just say stimulated? Sorry.

When it comes to putting photos on your blog, there are lots of things to consider.  

(Taken with a point-and-shoot in 2005)  

1. The higher the quality, the better. Now, let me emphasize that it is NOT necessary to go out and buy a fancy digital SLR and know everything about photography in order to put decent photos on your blog. There are many, many good digital point-and-shoots on the market, and as long as you familiarize yourself with the buttons and settings---and hold relatively still when you shoot---your photos will be good! Here are a couple of tips:

*  Figure out how to turn off the flash on your camera. Natural light photos will usually look more beautiful and dynamic than those with the built-in flash---especially photos of food!

*  Find the macro setting, too. It will allow you to take some ultra close-up shots, whether it be of flowers, jewelry, or bugs.

*  If you’re in the market for a new point-and-shoot, try to pick one up that has a wider angle lens. Wide lenses make for more dramatic landscapes and more interesting facial shots.  

2. Host your photos externally. Oh man, do I speak from experience here. Let me tell you a horrifying little tale: I started my blog in May 2006 on Blogger. Because I knew nothing about anything, I uploaded my photos straight into each blog post, which means they resided on the Blogger server. Then, when I moved my blog to a different host six months later, I discovered after the migration that none of the photos made it to the new host. This is understandable, of course: why should Blogger host my photos on another blogging site? But the problem was, I had six months of posts whose photos were not showing up on the new site.

So I took a bubble bath, ingested high doses of Vitamin B-12 (it’s good for blogging challenges), and spent an entire weekend digging through my old folders, finding the missing photos, then uploading them to an external photo site (Flickr)...THEN copying and pasting the code of each photo into the appropriate blog post.

It was one of the most horrendous, wheel-spinning experiences of my life. But just think if I’d waited till later to make the switch---it would’ve only gotten uglier.

For this reason, I believe it’s always a good idea to host your photos elsewhere and insert code for each photo into your post. That way, if your needs change, your content will be “portable”---meaning, you’ll be able to move your blog wherever you want without losing the photos in all of your posts.

Here are a few services people use:

* Flickr (www.flickr.com) - Though they’re not technically a photo hosting company

* Picasa Web Album

* Photobucket

3. Try to post photos with a slightly unconventional perspective. Here are some ideas:

* Rather than post photos of your son’s birthday cake with smiling children all around it, get really close to your son as he’s blowing out the candles and make sure to get his cheeks in all their bullfroggedness. This is much more interesting than a posed photo that most all humans have in their photo collection

* Get down on the ground to take photos! Everyone can stand up and take photos---that’s the perspective you usually see in average snapshots. So plop down on the ground and call your dog over to you. Get under a table and snap your kids walking through the room. Lie down in your garden and take a shot of a flower down on its level. I promise you’ll be wowed by the results.

* Get high! The flip side of that is to crawl on top of a table or cabinet or appliance, then shoot from that view. It can be fun!

Take a look at your blog today and see if it could use a little more visual interest. Start taking more photos, and try using them to tell some of your stories. It can really make a difference!

QUESTION: If you have a blog, where do you host your photos? Do you upload them directly into your blog software, or do you host them externally? What kind of photos do you like to see on blogs?

And finally, do you think thirty photos of cobbler is too many?

(On second thought, don’t answer that last question.)

See you later for Class 3!