Starting Your Own Photoblog
From PhotoblogsWiki
Contents |
Why?
A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words.
- Ansel Adams
Just as written blogs have transformed journaling from a private activity to a public one, photoblogs have made it possible for the enthusiast photog to find an audience. Just like any artistic endeavor, if it doesn't have an audience then the pursuit of photography is an indulgence or therapy. Those pictures sitting in boxes in your closet or as files on your computer need to be seen in part to justify the work that you put into producing them.
People start photoblogging for various reasons; some to show work they already have created, others to encourage themselves to produce new work. Some are looking for validation, some seek out constructive criticism. Some want to share their world in the visual light in which they see it. Make no mistake about it, there is an element of ego in all photoblogs as there is in most art. If you have a photoblog you are, in essence, declaring to the world, ' Here is my work - come and judge me.' It will cost you time and money so it is best to know your motives before you begin.
Will having a photoblog make you a better photographer? Maybe. If your photoblog forces you to take more pictures in order to feed it, hopefully it will be making you improve and grow as a photographer in the process. It should help you to edit your own work; you should be able to look through a day's shooting and find the one or two images you want to display on your blog. It should make you think about your own work and the work of others; being a photoblogger makes you part of a community whether you like it or not. Hopefully you will not be just maintaining your own photoblog in isolation but you will be regularly visiting the photoblogs of your peers. This allows you to judge your own work in a larger context. It also allows you to riff off other photobloggers work, ideas, themes and methods.
Will having a photoblog make you rich and famous? No. A few photobloggers try to make up a little of the money that they have invested in their sites by selling prints, calendars, courting gigs, etc. but no one is a professional photoblogger yet. Most (if not all) photobloggers are not full time professional photographers. Many want to be, and a few get the occasional commission but every photoblogger has a day job.
Professional photographers tend to like full control of their work so gallery or portfolio sites are more their style. Ansel Adams famously said; Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop and he was a pretty good photographer. Assuming you shoot as much as Ansel and you get your share of good shots in a year, even if you only post a picture twice a week, what are you going to post to your site the other 90% of the time? If you have a gallery site that you only update every few months you can stick to your A list shots. If you are a photoblogger it means that you are going to have to dip into your B and, perhaps, C lists of photos. You have to be a little brave to show the world work which you know isn't your best.
How?
Once you have decided that you want to buy into the world of photoblogging you now have to get a photoblog up and running. There are two basic approaches to establishing a photoblog; you can do-it-yourself or you can contract it out.Unlike static personal sites or galleries which are often hand coded html pages, most photoblogs rely on some kind of content management system (CMS). What is a CMS? For bloggers most CMS's have two faces: the one the photoblog author(s) use to create posts, and the one your visitors see when they visit your site. Typically, as an author you log into a web application that allows you to upload your images and add other details to create a post. The CMS then either immediately creates and changes your photoblogs html pages ready for your visitors or, when a visitor requests a page, the CMS dynamically creates and the returns page.
Contract Out
- The easiest way to get started is to go the contract-out route. As photoblogging has become more popular and mainstream several services have sprung up to serve those who don't want the hassles of setting up and maintaining their own server, site and software. These services can be as cheap as free and are a good way to get started right now even if you intend to set up your own site the long-winded way at a later date.
- Most of these services offer free accounts to get you going, often with limitations that they hope you will pay to remove. Setting up usually involves creating an account, choosing a template and then you are ready to start creating entries. Many of these sites laudably try to encourage community among their customers and their visitors, however, if you take your photography reasonably seriously you may find yourself in the minority. Ultimately it can be frustrating to have your work and voice drowned out by thousand of Brazilian teenagers with camera phones. There in lies the rub ... with a lot of these services it is hard to be part of a community outside the service's host own community; it may not be possible to register your site with photoblogs or have RSS feeds. It is also hard to express your individuality when you are limited to predefined templates and image sizes and formats.
- Please refer to the Photoblog Hosting page for links to organizations and companies that provide this kind of service.
Do It Yourself
If you want more control over your photoblog it involves a little more responsibility on your part. Typically you need three things to setup your photoblog:
- 1) A domain : you need a www address so that people can find and follow your site. You need to find a URL that no one else owns and that is memorable and/or witty. The price of owning a domain has gone down in recent years. You should be able to own your own domain for less than $10 a year. You may be able to register a domain through your server provider which makes things a little simpler.
- 2) Somewhere to host your site: you need server space somewhere. You need to associate this place with the domain you own. There are many companies out there willing to sell you hosting; please visit the Web_Hosting page for some that photoblog.org users recommend. There are several things to consider when looking for a host for your site including:
- The hosting service's reputation for reliability, service and speed.
- The volume of traffic your account will be permitted
- The volume of server space your account will be allowed
- The server features that your CMS software requires; often CGI, perl and the ability to install/run some kind of database will be required by blogging software. Check that the host you are looking at has everything you blogging software will need to run.
- 3) CMS: the software used to maintain and run your photoblog. The most common CMS's used by photoblog.org users are: movabletype, wordpress, pixelpost, linuxuser.at's photoblog and PhotoStand. The cost of this software ranges from free on up.
4)Choose a good template for your site - there are some template and plugin suggestions for starting a photoblog here
Once you have all these things you will need to follow the instructions that come with your chosen CMS software and install the application on your server and set it up. Each application is different but it can be a little geeky and frustrating to setup. Some companies will set up the application for you, usually for a price. If you are unfamiliar with webserver directory structures and ftp, etc. it is recommended that you find a helpful geek to help you out. Perhaps you already know someone who has set up your chosen CMS; offer them dinner and perhaps they could be persuaded to come over and help you out.
It is recommended that you install the software in the most vanilla way that you can to begin with. Then set up the most straightforward, default blog that you can and test out your system. You will need to test that you can access and maintain the blog as an author and that you can visit and see your blog as a visitor.
Once your CMS is installed correctly you now get to design your photoblog. Look around photoblogs and decide what kind of design you like. A lot of photoblogs display one photo per page; some display many entries per page. Consider navigation; it is usual to have next and previous links or buttons to scroll through entries. It is also usual to find some kind of archive by month and/or category. Are you going to have text with your images? If so where and how will it be displayed? Are you going to allow comments? Most photoblogs do. Will your comments appear on the same page as the image or in a separate window? What about a links and about page?
It is a good idea to sketch your design out on paper before you try to build it. In most blogging software to build your blog via templates. Carefully read your CMS documentation about how these templates and their tags work. If this is a little overwhelming the CMS supplier may provide some default template that you can use or adopt for photoblogging. There are also sites out there that will give or sell you templates. There are also site and communities that will help and support you as you try to build your templates.
- to be continued
- Describe how to get a domain, host, set up blogging software on you host, customize your site's look and start to post
See also: How to Build Your Own Photoblog
