Changes to my blog are coming. And there are no strings attached.
Today I got to thinking about my blog and the challenges I’ve faced with photography and how far I’ve come in the past two and a half years since I bought my Nikon D90 and started to get serious about photography. I’ve advanced (in my own mind, at least) enough to justify moving from my D90 crop frame camera to my D800 full frame camera and I’ve added some professional lenses to my camera bag, with even more on my wish list. I haven’t missed posting at least a photo a day since I started this blog on January 1, 2011 (that’s 746 days with two posts on some days and multiple photos on many days). I love the challenge of this blog and I love the technical and artistic challenges that taking good photographs require of me. I’m comfortable calling myself a photographer. But lately I have found myself struggling to find the time to do it the way I want to do it and I sometimes compromise my standards.
My good friend and fellow photo-blogger Melinda and I started blogging on the same day and, after two years, we both found the last couple of months an extreme challenge to complete our daily commitment to our blogs. Melinda has wisely modified her blog commitment and no longer demands herself to post to her blog every day and she has suggested I consider doing something similar. She has given me some excellent advice and I think I will take it. Various sources suggest that posting 3-5 times a week is the most anyone should post (except when fulfilling a 365 commitment) because if you post more than 4 or 5 days a week, it becomes overwhelming to your readers/followers and they feel they can’t keep up with it; if you post only once a week, they forget to read it.
I haven’t completely decided how I want to change my blog but I am pretty certain I will not continue to post every day. However, when I stop posting every day is anybody’s guess. I will probably feel guilty when I miss a daily post for the first time and, God forbid, if I don’t take a photo, but I will try to wean myself away from the daily grind. I do know that I already have thousands of photos that are blog-worthy and that I want to post either on my blog, or I may set up a photo gallery. I often take photos that I love but that don’t fit whatever theme I’ve decided to post for the day so they never see the light of day. With a new philosophy for my blog, I can resurrect many of these photos. And, as I improve my facility with Lightroom and Photoshop, I may even repost old photos that I’ve been able to improve. I posted the majority of my shots in the first year and a half straight out of the camera without any adjustments because of my misguided notion that SOOC was the way a “real” photographer does it. I have found that could not be further from the truth and that even film photographers make adjustments in the dark room, dodging and burning and making other changes to the negatives to achieve the look and feel they seek.
I’m experimenting with this post. I actually wrote it late on January 16 and scheduled it to post on January 17, featuring a couple additional guitar shots that I took on January 16. I changed them to black and white with a vignette to add more interest.
Oh- I love these! Absolutely stunning in black and white! I think I like the top one best- something mysterious about the composition- but they are both beautiful (as was yesterday’s). Prediction: You will feel very uncomfortable initially with your new blog “rules” for yourself- but then very free and in control of your photographic journey!