Ever wonder how to make a blog look good enough to eat? Photography is a great way to inject some much needed energy into a site. Jay aka Mocha Beanie Mummy is a professional photographer in "real life". Here she gives us 7 suggestions for improving photography on your blog.
There are so many ways to do it, and how much effort you make dictates how fast you will improve. But if you’re not sure where to start, then hopefully this will give you a shove in the right direction!
1. Take part in blog memes for fun - it’s good practice whether it’s working on photos that have meaning to you, specific themes, areas you want to improve - it all helps. Put yourself out there! There’s a world of support at your fingertips. Why not come and try out Silent Sunday? One photo which you took in the last week and NO WORDS in the post - easy! Use the linky and the badge to be connected to plenty more blogs doing the same thing, peruse lots of photos at your pleasure.
2. Stalk blogs you love- great as a source of inspiration in how to you use the photos you do take, photo blog stalking is one of my favourite past times. I’m rubbish for actually reading blogs, but can spend many hours gazing at other people’s photography. From parent blogs to specific photography sites, there’s always inspiration to be found. Inspiration eventually leads to you developing ideas of your own. To help you keep track, add another blogroll to your list which is just for photography. You might just help someone else out with it too...
3. Open a “photography bank” - flickr, blipfoto, posterous, photobucket- they’re all great ways of “saving” your photos online. You can then use them for future posts, look back on them to see how you’ve improved (or where you want to go next). They’re also great places to find inspiration from others - archives loaded to the max with every photo you could possibly imagine.
4. Use your hardware resources- I have said it before I will say it again. You really do not need top of the range photography equipment for taking photos for your blog. Unless you’re planning something spectacularly huge, you’ll be amazed at how much you can get away with just using a point-and-shoot compact or a basic dSLR - I’ll happily use my iPhone/mobile phone camera and it’s multitude of apps to get me through loads of posts!
5. Learn to use software resources- So you’re taking your photos but now you want to tweak them a bit. You don’t need to spend a fortune on the likes of Photoshop, Lightroom, Aperture and whatever else. There are loads of free editing programs like Picnik and Gimp. Not enough for you? Then here’s a list of other ones to try. As long as you save your original, never be afraid to experiment!
6. Push yourself a little - if you’re really brave, try a 365 Project, or set up your own like my 365 Project with some friends for instant support - one photo a day every day for a year. Or set other tasks and challenges. Maybe aim to have a certain collage of photos by the end of the month? Or choose a subject you like to photograph and aim for a number of images within a specific time frame.
7. Just ask! - there are SO MANY people out there who are a dab hand with a camera, and an insane number of forums and blogs offering all the help you like. Not to mention twitter being a haven for photographers and people hunting for images of just about anything. I run a tiny photography blog where you can ask whatever questions you like, but I make a point of removing as much of the jargon as possible - we’re talking absolute basics to make it easy for everyone to understand.
