Who has a photo blog or FB page?

[Bensch]

Hi everyone,

For the last few weeks I've been toying with the idea of starting a personal photo blog, to share some of my photos, and wanted to get everyone's opinion.

What are people's view on blog vs Facebook page, or similar?

I don't have any experience with blogs, so not too sure what to expect, but thought it would also be a great learning experience.

[Geoff79]

I didn't answer the poll. I have a FB page, but I use it as frequently as I run my hands through my hair... which is not often. I had this grand idea about a month back that I would post a photo from my archives every day and I did it for a little under one week (I think I did 5 photos over 5 days) and then I just wondered why I was bothering. It actually coincided with my return to this site. I get much more joy out of this site than Facebook could ever provide. It's too busy and I get sick of it really quick.

I am subscribed to two photo email/blog lists and I enjoy them both a lot, although one has stopped sending daily emails quite a while back. They seem a good idea if you can somehow draw in an audience, and you need some proper IT/technical knowledge too, as far as I can tell.

Anyway, this post doesn't really help much. I'd definitely say go for it if you're confident you can get it set up with an audience. I think I'm still quite a few years away from actually having decent enough photos to sell or anything, but I would love to create a blog type thing one day which displayed my photos with the option to click on and purchase them. But like I said, I think all that stuff does take quite a bit of technical savvy.

Whatever you do, good luck with it and let us know how you go.

[Bensch]

Hi Geoff, and thanks for your reply :th3:

Thank you for the info, greatly appreciated. I'm not too worried about drawing a large audience, as it is mainly for my own enjoyment. If anyone happens to read it, it's a bonus :D I'm thinking more of it as something along the lines of a photo diary/journal.

I do prefer the forums here, as everyone is so friendly :th3: was just thinking about somewhere to ramble away :D

I've gone ahead and created a basic one (pretty much just a couple of mouse clicks) using blogger https://andysphotographyblog.blogspot.com.au/ (hopefully it's ok to post a link to it here) and thought that if it doesn't work out, I can just delete it.

Thanks Geoff :)

PS - no worries about the poll, I just thought some might prefer a poll rather than typing a reply.

[Geoff79]

Okay, now the worm has turned, so to speak. The link you provided looks nice. Sleek, clean, basically set out and just... nice. You said it was really easy to set up?

Does it cost you anything, or is that something anyone can set up for free without any real technical knowledge?

Also, although you aren't worried about a large audience, would you still be looking to get a few spectators, and how would you go about advising people who might be interested of your page?

Sorry for all the questions... but it is something I wouldn't mind trying out too, if easy enough to set up.

[Bensch]

Okay, now the worm has turned, so to speak. The link you provided looks nice. Sleek, clean, basically set out and just... nice. You said it was really easy to set up?

Does it cost you anything, or is that something anyone can set up for free without any real technical knowledge?

Also, although you aren't worried about a large audience, would you still be looking to get a few spectators, and how would you go about advising people who might be interested of your page?

Sorry for all the questions... but it is something I wouldn't mind trying out too, if easy enough to set up.

No worries at all, it is really simple to set up, all you need is a google/gmail account, or set up a new account when you go to sign up.

Blogger is free, and it hosts all the content on its site (being a google app) there are other sites that are more complex, but Blogger was really simple to set up. I essentially searched on youtube for "blogger for beginners" and watched a video on someone setting a site up, and went from there.

Not too sure on the advertising, but I'd perhaps share the link on social media. However, when you create new posts on the blog, you can add keywords, I think they would show up on search engines?

I'm not the most technology savvy person, but feel free to PM me if I can be of any help :th3:

[Geoff79]

Thanks Andy, much appreciated. I'm off on holidays next week, so I'm not sure I'll get to this before I go, but it's something I think I want to look into. Thanks for the valuable info. [emoji6]


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[ricktas]

I have facebook, its the only social media site I use. whereas a lot of the photographers I know on facebook have instagram, snapchat, google+, 500px, twitter and all these other social things as well. They often seem to post to instagram and then copy that post to facebook, snapchat and then everything is duplicated across all their social media. They have big discussions on which is the best for getting noticed more, and talk about the demographic of those who 'like' their posts. For them it is all about getting noticed, getting likes etc and almost competing with each other, not over great photos, but about who gets more likes, etc. They often will put up 3-4 versions of the same photo and advise they are entering a competition and ask their likers to tell them which version to enter.

They play a numbers game. It is all about who has the furthest 'reach' on social media. They have probably realised that if you have 500 likers and you occasionally get someone wanting to buy a photo, then having 500,000 likers means that occasionally become more frequent.

Blogs, I have friends who have won the best food blog in Tasmania (not sure how it is judged??), who from that got invited to go to Europe and visit countries and via the various countries tourism boards, promote those countries. They to link their blog into facebook, instagram etc. They are currently in Bulgaria, blogging about the best burger joints in Sofia. They don't promote themselves on their blog, they have always promoted the places they went. Whether that be a pub, restaurant, cafe, town, city, region etc. So perhaps consider that with your blog. Write and show photos of where you went, link to local businesses, etc. Make it about the locations, reasons for going there etc, not all about yourself.

Whatever you do, it appears the best thing you can do is cross-pollinate around the social media platforms and beg for likers, cause the more likers you get the better when it comes to blogs and social media.

I don't personally use facebook this way. I have just over 100 facebook friends, who except for about 5, I have met in real life. So you need to decide what you want from your blog/facebook page and if it is just to share your photos and stories with friends, or if you want to market it to a wider audience, how you are going to do that? And who is that audience and how do you attract them to your blog?

[ameerat42]

Hi everyone,

For the last few weeks I've been toying with the idea of starting a personal photo blog, to share some of my photos, and wanted to get everyone's opinion.

What are people's view on blog vs Facebook page, or similar?

I don't have any experience with blogs, so not too sure what to expect, but thought it would also be a great learning experience.

My opinion, since you asked, by way of considering the motives:
"Share/ing photos": Is it with people you know, or is it just foisting them on the otherwise apathetic public?
"Blog/ging" (from weB-LOG/ging): On this you have two opposing views: you have "no experience" AND think
it might be "a great learning experience".

I don't see the need for either from your stated facts above, and it sounds like you are seeking other justification
for starting such a venture. My suggestion would be: figure out what you are wanting to do, then from some further
research, and the non-self-justifying replies you may get from this thread, decide if either or both paths will help you.

In keeping with my reply, I picked "Other" in your poll.

[Bensch]

I have facebook, its the only social media site I use. whereas a lot of the photographers I know on facebook have instagram, snapchat, google+, 500px, twitter and all these other social things as well. They often seem to post to instagram and then copy that post to facebook, snapchat and then everything is duplicated across all their social media. They have big discussions on which is the best for getting noticed more, and talk about the demographic of those who 'like' their posts. For them it is all about getting noticed, getting likes etc and almost competing with each other, not over great photos, but about who gets more likes, etc. They often will put up 3-4 versions of the same photo and advise they are entering a competition and ask their likers to tell them which version to enter.

They play a numbers game. It is all about who has the furthest 'reach' on social media. They have probably realised that if you have 500 likers and you occasionally get someone wanting to buy a photo, then having 500,000 likers means that occasionally become more frequent.

Blogs, I have friends who have won the best food blog in Tasmania (not sure how it is judged??), who from that got invited to go to Europe and visit countries and via the various countries tourism boards, promote those countries. They to link their blog into facebook, instagram etc. They are currently in Bulgaria, blogging about the best burger joints in Sofia. They don't promote themselves on their blog, they have always promoted the places they went. Whether that be a pub, restaurant, cafe, town, city, region etc. So perhaps consider that with your blog. Write and show photos of where you went, link to local businesses, etc. Make it about the locations, reasons for going there etc, not all about yourself.

Whatever you do, it appears the best thing you can do is cross-pollinate around the social media platforms and beg for likers, cause the more likers you get the better when it comes to blogs and social media.

I don't personally use facebook this way. I have just over 100 facebook friends, who except for about 5, I have met in real life. So you need to decide what you want from your blog/facebook page and if it is just to share your photos and stories with friends, or if you want to market it to a wider audience, how you are going to do that? And who is that audience and how do you attract them to your blog?



Thanks Rick, a lot of good information to think about, greatly appreciated :th3:

I'm not really worried about selling my photos, more just sharing them. Reviewing places that I've been to does sound like a great idea :th3:

Thanks again Rick, you've given me a great deal to think about :th3:

[db3348]

I have a FB page, mainly for keeping in contact with relies / friends, not so much for a photographic purpose, although I do sometimes put photos there when I go travelling, to share my travel pics with those aforementioned friends / relies.

Been contemplating creating separate site / 'blog' to promote my images, but it's still a long way off materialising.
My thoughts are that because there is already a glut of photo-gallery sites out there, how is mine going to stand out and be any different or simply get lost in the crowd (apart from using appropriate metatags to get it to appear at top of search engines like Google, Bing, etc) ? .

[Tannin]

I run my own site, hand-coded from scratch. It includes a content management system which automates uploading and display of pictures, and provides a variety of useful functions. For example, I can look at a picture of a Yellow Robin taken in winter 2014 in a woodland in south-east NSW, and with a single click then ask it to display all the other robins, or all the other pictures taken in SE NSW, or all the pictures taken in winter 2014, or all the pictures in or of temperate woodlands. Another click takes me to a Google map of the particular place.

Or, with three or four clicks, I can tell it to display all the pictures taken with (say) a Canon 20D sorted by ISO, or all the pictures taken with the 10-22, sorted from worst to best, or any of a wide variety of other permutations and combinations. When I'm looking for something, this is really useful and I use that function often.

It is 100% advertising-free, and very nearly 100% Javascript-free, so it loads much faster than most sites. Nor does it use any of the ubiquitous pre-packed frameworks and libraries which clog up most sites with pages of complex, unnecessary code. It has been sadly neglected for the last several years while I have been busy with other things, but I have recently done most of the required work to (a) re-code to the latest HTML and CSS standards such that it displays well on any supported device and browser, and (b) switch over to much higher resolution pictures for those with decent-sized screens.

(For those interested in technical details, it is entirely hand-coded in HTML 5 and PHP using a simple programmer's text editor and is now based on CSS Grid. It used to be amazingly quick to load, and would be faster still now on the new, slimmed-down code, except that the new default 1600 x 1200 image size makes for large files. The new CSS Grid system is wonderfully simple and elegant. Being new, it is only supported by the better-quality modern browsers, such as Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Vivaldi. Pale Moon and Seamonkey support is expected to follow in time. Edge is a little buggy but getting there. (Not that I really care.) Don't know (or care much) about Safari. My expectation is that CSS Grid will be the standard system Internet-wide within a few years. Currently I'm working on replacing the old 800 x 600 images with 1600 x 1200 versions. I'm working on those backwards, newest first: I recently finished uploading the 2011 pictures and have started on the 2010 ones. When I've done the whole lot, I'll go back to fine-tuning display on different devices, particularly mobiles, which are only part tested so far. Then it will be time to think about new functional enhancements, which is the fun job.)

[Bensch]

I have a FB page, mainly for keeping in contact with relies / friends, not so much for a photographic purpose, although I do sometimes put photos there when I go travelling, to share my travel pics with those aforementioned friends / relies.

Been contemplating creating separate site / 'blog' to promote my images, but it's still a long way off materialising.
My thoughts are that because there is already a glut of photo-gallery sites out there, how is mine going to stand out and be any different or simply get lost in the crowd (apart from using appropriate metatags to get it to appear at top of search engines like Google, Bing, etc) ? .

Thanks for the info :th3:

I do already have a personal Facebook account which I use to keep in touch with friends/family, and post the occasional photo there, just wasn't sure if it was worth pursuing something extra.

I suppose it comes down to; what do I want to accomplish with it, and how can I get it seen.

Thanks again :)

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I run my own site, hand-coded from scratch. It includes a content management system which automates uploading and display of pictures, and provides a variety of useful functions. For example, I can look at a picture of a Yellow Robin taken in winter 2014 in a woodland in south-east NSW, and with a single click then ask it to display all the other robins, or all the other pictures taken in SE NSW, or all the pictures taken in winter 2014, or all the pictures in or of temperate woodlands. Another click takes me to a Google map of the particular place.

Or, with three or four clicks, I can tell it to display all the pictures taken with (say) a Canon 20D sorted by ISO, or all the pictures taken with the 10-22, sorted from worst to best, or any of a wide variety of other permutations and combinations. When I'm looking for something, this is really useful and I use that function often.

It is 100% advertising-free, and very nearly 100% Javascript-free, so it loads much faster than most sites. Nor does it use any of the ubiquitous pre-packed frameworks and libraries which clog up most sites with pages of complex, unnecessary code. It has been sadly neglected for the last several years while I have been busy with other things, but I have recently done most of the required work to (a) re-code to the latest HTML and CSS standards such that it displays well on any supported device and browser, and (b) switch over to much higher resolution pictures for those with decent-sized screens.

(For those interested in technical details, it is entirely hand-coded in HTML 5 and PHP using a simple programmer's text editor and is now based on CSS Grid. It used to be amazingly quick to load, and would be faster still now on the new, slimmed-down code, except that the new default 1600 x 1200 image size makes for large files. The new CSS Grid system is wonderfully simple and elegant. Being new, it is only supported by the better-quality modern browsers, such as Firefox, Chrome, Opera, and Vivaldi. Pale Moon and Seamonkey support is expected to follow in time. Edge is a little buggy but getting there. (Not that I really care.) Don't know (or care much) about Safari. My expectation is that CSS Grid will be the standard system Internet-wide within a few years. Currently I'm working on replacing the old 800 x 600 images with 1600 x 1200 versions. I'm working on those backwards, newest first: I recently finished uploading the 2011 pictures and have started on the 2010 ones. When I've done the whole lot, I'll go back to fine-tuning display on different devices, particularly mobiles, which are only part tested so far. Then it will be time to think about new functional enhancements, which is the fun job.)

Thanks Tony :th3:

Your site looks really impressive :th3: and has captured what my goal is; somewhere to display the pictures that I have taken.

I'm not really interested in the whole advertising/selling path, just somewhere that I can display the pictures that I enjoy taking.

Unfortunately I don't know how to code in HTML/PHP (hence the simple blog route) but I suppose when you don't know anything about a particular subject, the only way is upwards :th3:

Thanks again :)

[CathyC]

I have both Facebook & a blog (a blogger blog) - Facebook is mostly personal use, linked with my camera club activities - but my blog is my way of recording some of the story behind the images (it did start out as a foodie/cooking blog, but I don't spend that much time in the kitchen anymore LOL).

My advice is to to do what you feel comfortable with :)

PS - just visited your blog :) and left a comment.

[Bensch]

I have both Facebook & a blog (a blogger blog) - Facebook is mostly personal use, linked with my camera club activities - but my blog is my way of recording some of the story behind the images (it did start out as a foodie/cooking blog, but I don't spend that much time in the kitchen anymore LOL).

My advice is to to do what you feel comfortable with :)

PS - just visited your blog :) and left a comment.

Thanks Cathy, greatly appreciated :th3:

Think I'll play around with the blog for a while, see how things go :)