Create Your Own Photo Blog [Paperback]

Not all blogs revolve around the written word. The recent proliferation of digital photography has given rise to the use of blogs focused on the visual element, commonly referred to as photo blogs. Catherine Jamieson has been at the front of this movement with her Utata site, and she shares her knowledge and insight in the book Create Your Own Photo Blog. This is an incredibly beautiful book that is also extremely useful...

Contents:

Part 1 - Getting Started: Join The Revolution; Exposing Your Style; Finding a Home for Your Photo Blog

Part 2 - Setting Up: Build Your Blog - The Toolkit; The Workbench - Inside Your Blog; The Design Studio - Skins and Customizing

Part 3 - Working With Photographs: The Photographs That Work; From Camera to Blog - Making the Magic Happen; 100 Photo Ideas to Get You Shooting; Letting People Know You've Arrived; flickr; Doing Cool Things with Your Blog

Index

Using commonly available and proven tools like flicker and Moveable Type, Jamieson walks you through the process of setting up a web site, finding hosting services, and then using her tools of choice to build and manage your photo blog. Her recommendations involve using Moveable Type as your blogging software, the flickr site for storing your photos online, and the web hosting service of Nexcess which offers a special package for people who buy the book. If you're already familiar with blogging or web sites, you might find that you have some/most/all of these areas covered. In that case, you can move onto the areas that deal with how to develop your photo blog related to style, concept, quality, and so forth. The writing style is intelligent and readable, so even the areas that may not be relevant to your particular situation are still hard to skip over.

The feature of this book I enjoyed the most was the assistance on how to shoot good pictures. Rather than just focus on the mechanics of the software, she gets into how to choose subjects, composition of pictures, and a number of other items related to taking compelling shots. Even if someone wasn't quite ready to commit to starting a photo blog, they could still get quite a bit out of the book when it comes to improving the quality of your pictures. Couple that with the ability to put them online using something like flickr (if you don't already do that), and you're well on your way almost before you realize it.

I'll spare my friends and readers and stick to what I know best... regular blogs. My picture-taking ability is nothing to write home about, and it wouldn't be worth blogging in my case. But should that bug ever hit me and I change my mind, this will be the book I'd use to get started.

Most of us have a secret artist hidden somewhere inside of us, looking for a way to break free. With her book, Create Your Own Photo Blog, Catherine Jamieson gives our hidden artist an escape route.

There's a growing population of people (among which I count myself) who use the internet every day...for work, for research, for news, for fun...but who lack the techno-geek know-how to actually construct a personal presence on the web. This book seems to have been written just for us. The author gives us easily understood instructions on how to build a photoblog, but without ever talking down to us. That's very refreshing.

But this is more than just an instructional manual. Jamieson also writes about blog design (how to personalize your own photoblog), about photographic technique (everything from the elements of composition to the use of color), and about basic image processing methods in different applications (photoshop and picasa, for example). If that's not enough, she even includes a "idea generator" to give your imagination a creative boost.

There is only one problem with this book: the title doesn't do it justice. It's not just about creating a photoblog; it's about establishing a creative presence on the internet.

I haven't created my own photo blog just yet, but holding this new book in my hands gets me really excited about the prospects of doing so asap -- and, it would be a great resource for current photo bloggers.

The first thing one notices is that this book is beautiful; positively packed with the author's stunning and inspirational photos. Secondly, it is loaded with practical instruction on setting up a first-rate blog, or improving an existing blog, including professional templates created by the author. And, I appreciated the chapter on getting the most from the online photo-sharing site, flickr. To top things off, the chapter on 100 photo ideas is alone worth the price of the book. Apparently Catherine Jamieson is developing quite a following, and I can understand why.

I haven't seen a book quite like this -- it appears to be the first credible approach to the photo blogging phenomenon. Its marvelous value and superb execution should make it a classic.