The other night I was talking with a photographer friend and she was lamenting how she didn’t have anything to post on her blog. Her ideal blog post is a portfolio level image. I suppose that is all of our ‘ideal’ blog posts, but it doesn’t happen all that often. When we are out shooting assignments for someone else, you don’t always get a portfolio level photo. You get great photos and photos that solve the clients problems and fit their needs, but they are not always at portfolio level. When you do some testing or shoot a personal project or just shoot for fun, that is when you have a better chance of making a portfolio level shot. So I was trying to tell my friend that the blog and other social media is not always for the top level photos. To me, your web site is where those go, your portfolio website. The blog is for fun stuff, a look at who I am and what I do. A glimpse at a set, at a client, at a subject, at my wrap party, with my friends and family. It is where I say things like ‘Whoa! I got to meet Mario Andretti last night!’. It is for that shot of the clouds that look like Homer Simpson or the car covered in bumper stickers that you saw at the coffee shop parking lot. A shot of my dog, or your cat, laying int he beautiful light while you work on the computer and wish you were shooting. Basically a look into what is happening in my/your life. It doesn’t have to be groundbreaking. I think many of us hold off on posting stuff until we think we have something profound to say, and then it is 4 months since you last post and the guilt and pressure builds until you are frozen by the weight of having a GREAT post to make up for it! I was of the same mindset for a long time, until I did my ‘summer photo of the day’ project last year. It was an eye opener. I could post a fun photo that wasn’t maybe the ‘greatest’ photo.
I meet with a group of 6 photographers every other week and we discuss all sorts of things about our professional and personal lives. We help each other edit and make up marketing schedules. We come up with different ways to display each others work. We talk about estimating and local vs. national clients. We talk about what might make a sweet set of photos or which project to work on next. We drink beer and wine. We also discuss social media. My original friends in the beginning of this post is a member of this group and I know that about half of the rest of the group struggle with or don’t care about social media or blogs or twitter or facebook. So I decided to challenge the group to a 30 day social media posting party. I came up with, stole got the idea from a something that is going around in the mommy blogs these days. They are doing a photo a day for each month of the year. Someone makes a list and it flies around the interwebs world and other mommy bloggers jump on it. I made up a list, stealing borrowing some of the mommy ideas and some of my own and presented to our group last night. I said here is the list of loose assignments, here is why, here is when. I didn’t want this to sit around for a week, so I said let’s start this tomorrow, today. This was met with some cheers and understanding and some skepticism and doubt. But after a bit of discussion, we all are more or less on board and here is my first photo. I wont post to the blog everyday, but will post at least to facebook everyday.
Day 1 – This is me.
job well done:-)