On Blogging

Winter is struggling to find a foot-hold here in Alberta, but it is the season for many of us to slow down and become more introspective. I have been standing back from all my blogs and my photography recently trying to better understand what I want to achieve in these areas. In this post I will discuss blogging, but much will be applicable to photography as well– in that both have similar motivations.

Recently, the Nature Blog Network asked the question, Why do you blog? My immediate response was:

I see blogging as a type of self-education that I hope others can learn from as well. It forces me to focus and do research on subjects that I might otherwise just pass off with an appreciative (or unappreciative!) comment. At its simplest, the blog is a personal journal with a public face. It is not just a reflection of my thoughts and interests today: it is an electronic, illustrated and search-able archive of what I have found important in the past – all with the benefit on input from the community. As such,(and for what it is worth) it may be the only legacy I have – whatever that means in the long-term in this digital age.¹

Take a seat...

Almost all the responses in some way expressed the community aspect of blogging. Of course my comment was an ideal — often my posts will throw out an idea or an image I think is interesting and it would seem to fall flat — it is hard to know how something is seen when there are no responses. This is partly due to my not having found the right ‘voice’, and perhaps partly because people generally do not want to leave negative comments. As an experiment I started a photo-only blog, which featured some of my personal photo favorites, most dealing with extremes of light and darkness. I invited people through Twitter and Facebook and then I invited critiques – but it has fallen flat, and I will have to open it up as a regular linking blog. Having visited some photography forums on SmugMug, I believe a may have to switch over to that format to find critiques on  photographs.

 

Voyaging in Murky Waters

This post will reveal my mental meanderings as I rethink the use of  blogs and photography. To those who manage to read the whole post, please feel free to join in by adding to the comments.

Prow On

I started blogging for a number of reasons: to learn, to educate, to share and to let off steam with an occasional rant. My primary blog was Evolving Complexity, but I now have shifted my focus to Voyages Around My Camera.

I have done a bit of shuffling lately, moving my insect and arachnid photographs to a new blog called The Bug Whisperer. This was only part of a re-thinking of blogging and how I can share what I do and the images I appreciate.

My new approach is based on caring less for quantity of visitors and being more concerned with the quality of visitors -  that means posting  better quality articles that are pertinent to the appropriate blog. Better quality articles means a general focus of improving my writing skills and an increased attention to the quality of my photographs. Every blog will find its own audience -  hopefully visitors will join in by sharing information and adding photo critiques. Of course, I have the same amount of time as before, so more blogs will equal less posts.

It’s not only about me. There are a lot of great photography and nature oriented blogs and websites out there that I find inspiring and worth visiting. Having a link page with 500 links on it seems pointless, so splitting the blogs up allows me to be more selective, so I can list the best of the relevant blogs in a more visible way. And all posts are open to constructive comments by readers, so all can contribute.

So where in the world is Voyages Around My Camera? What is popular with viewers so far? Looking at the Top Ten posts since this blog began, 7 are about equipment. The highest scoring non-equipment post was the early Beijing Opera in Edmonton article which places as the 2nd most popular post. It is followed by the 6th place, Victoria Trail, Alberta post and then the 9th place Essence of Gecko.

 

Meet me at the Crossroad?

I began Voyages Around My Camera to chart my progress as I started to devote more time to photography. Macro is my passion, but I am finding pleasure in other traditional forms of photography as well as abstractions. I have been thinking that I should pull the buggy segment out of this blog and create a new site devoted to the photography of the insects, spiders and other invertebrates. This will allow the arachnophobes and entomophobes to visit Voyages without anxiety, and perhaps even place a comment or two without fear of hairy, spike-legged, bug-eyed invert retribution. The new buggy blog will allow me to create a more focused site with more concentrated links and a better survey of what the web holds for us bugsters. Last week Chris Wirth went through this process for his cicindela blog, and that gave me the inspiration to do the same.

And, after all, what’s one more blog?

So the day will come when all the insect posts on this blog will vanish and what remains of Voyages will be free of creepy-crawlies, but otherwise will continue in the same format that it is now.

All I need is a snappy new blog  name…

Any suggestions for the new blog? Let me know what you think  by adding to the comments.

 

New Science Site to Feature Photobloggers

Alex Wild of Myrmecos has been contracted by Scienceblogs to be the inaugural host of a new site called Photo Synthesis.

The internet is home to a wealth of captivating science images, from the many microscopic components of a cell to the remote corners of the universe captured by Hubble. On Photo Synthesis, we aim to bring you the best of what’s out there. Every month we will feature the work of a different photoblogger, exposing worlds both small and large, familiar and exotic. We will let the power of the lens take us where we ourselves are not able to go.

Alex, primarily known (by me anyhow!) as a great myrmecologist and photomacrographer, introduces himself:

I became a photographer by accident. As an entomologist, several years ago I started posting photographs of my six-legged study subjects to my web site, naively unaware of the market for science photography. After a time I began hearing from textbook publishers and photo editors interested in licensing images.It’s not that I had pretty pictures- after all, the world is already drowning in gorgeous photography- it’s that I had science pictures, pictures captioned with correct latin names and tagged with behavioral notes stemming from my training as a biologist. It is at this intersection of science and photography where I’ve found my happy niche.

I, and a host of other photographers will be eagerly looking forward to each post.

((This is a duplicate post from my blog Evolving Complexity)