Will It Blog?

Writing this blog has been a very rewarding experience for a couple of years now, a lot of input from visitors from around the globe and a growing number of contacts that I didn’t really have before. No direct income, though.

This English blog started as a little brother, a lot more focused brother with just studio lighting diagrams and setups in the beginning. More like a “Read More” companion to my Flickr account than anything else. And a way of getting a little amount of my Flickr traffic to spill over to my own domain.

Always think of a blog angle

I have been helping a lot of people starting a blog of their own, and their first question is always the same: “How do I find stuff to write about?“.

When I started, I had the exact same problem, coupled with what we in Sweden call the Law of Jante (in short, who do you think you are? You are not especially good or very interesting, work harder instead). And that can make a lot of people put their blogging plans in the trash bin even before they have started writing their first post.

Nowadays, I always think of the blog when I work (will it blog?), or when I say yes to some assignment that might not be the best paid thing but could have other qualities, for example good material for a blog post or adding to a section of my portfolio that needs more examples in that category.

This will blog just fine

And that is a new way of seeing things, depending on the market you work in there are bound to be open niches for a photographer to fill in. To use an example, I did a photo shoot for a Swedish clothing brand a couple of years ago. They couldn’t pay me as much as my ordinary clients would, but I had no experience of shooting garments on models so I was happy to try.

To get the most out of this project, I took my time documenting it all for the blog, and wrote a blog post about it two years ago; Clothing Photography – Step by step.

This post is also available in Swedish, and it has lead to at least three more assignments of that kind. And a lot of price quotes that never landed in anything, of course. But without the post, no one would guess that I could do stuff like that (partly because I have been so slow on updating my portfolio).

It also resulted in this being featured on the blog lighting company Profoto has, which during two years has given me a lot of new visitors.

Money, brand or ego

Being a photographer, I need a little of everything. I can’t pay my rent with the value of my brand, but it helps for other things. The same goes for my ego, even if I have a bad day, just looking at the visitor statistics from Google Analytics makes me feel good. I can have a day when I produce completely nothing, but my blog still gets visitors, I still get comments on Facebook or Flickr. And that helps me from feeling lousy. And if I would feel lousy, I would probably be a bad seller and an even worse photographer.

It is of course a bad economic decision to spend too much time on social media, but it might be even worse not to do it at all. You just have to start, and sooner or later things will come naturally.

Write everything down

Nowadays, I have, as I said, more drafts than I have the time to finish writing them. And many times the drafts never makes it into a blog post, but just having them there can help me finding ideas for other posts.

I write blog titles or small ideas as notes in my phone, and I always shoot some behind the scenes photos on every assignment I do. You never know if you might find the time or inspiration to let it turn into a post, and they always benefit from a couple of snapshots. It fills the posts, can be used as on-the-fly updates on Facebook and/or Twitter etc etc.

Note to self

Many times, my blog posts begins as a reminder to myself. For example to always shoot a clean background picture when I do portraits on location, so I can match every portrait to the same background with some masking. That makes the editing process much faster and gives all the portraits the same framing. But I can’t remember if I have written a post about that. Must do that soon, if I haven’t.

Writing things down has a lot of advantages (as opposed to having it all swirling in my head). One thing is that I remember it better if I have been forced to formulate it as a blog post, another is that I don’t have to think about it all the time.

It comes full circle when I can go back to my blog and find stuff I might have forgotten, like a diary of some sort. And if I, as a photographer, can find those things interesting and helpful, there will probably be others that feel the same way.

Nothing is too easy or simple

“Everything looks easy when you know how to do it”, or something like that. And that is the same with everything. What I might find simple logic, others might see as a solution to a problem they have. It can be simple things like always bring a couple of meters of black fabric to cover windows or to use as a flag. Things I pick up somewhere and incorporate into my routine. And probably don’t even think about it, I just do it.

And that, can be a blog post.

One assignment – many blog posts

Every assignment could easily translate into at least three different blog posts. The first could be about the planning, or the brief, or the challenge.

The second one could be a short one on-location, maybe during the shoot. I sometimes post Instagram photos to Facebook and Twitter when I have the time. It is interesting how many that respond to simple behind-the-scenes photos of a setup or just a detail, but then again, I find that interesting too, so why wouldn’t others do the same?

The third version could be on the editing process, or the many choices you have when everything is on the computer and you have to chose how to process it all.

It could also be a post on how to get people to act during a group shot, and the psychology behind it. How to keep people focused or how to place them.

And of course, the final result.

Cross-link everything

I have been trying to tag my posts as good as I can, but there is still work to be done there. After a while, when the tagging structure is in place, it is easy to make a simple post much more interesting by linking internally to other posts on the same subject, or ones containing examples with the same light modifier.

Sooner or later, you will have a structure that allows you to write blog posts on a specific piece of equipment and easily link to other posts with examples. You don’t even have to produce anything new, just make a different package of the same content.

Refry old stuff, and make new stuff

It works when you cook, so why not for the blog? I can sometimes go through old posts to find inspiration for new ones. That goes for setups as well as other ideas.

Taking old content and give it a new spin can be interesting, if just to keep the writing going. Because if you stop writing, you might start questioning if this is interesting and then it all stops. This is not a book, this is a blog, and I can edit old content, or just fill it with new, better content.

I do the same thing over and over again. Thinking of blogging about the same thing might sound boring, but there are certainly small details that differ. And they can be the subject of a new blog post. How I do the same thing better by changing X, or by using this new technique. There is always something to write about.

This could go on forever, now I just lost my original idea for this blog post a bit and will stop here. But I hope that my message is clear. Start writing a blog about what you do, you will get a lot out of it. You will learn a lot, you will feel good and you will create contacts around the world. Maybe not today, but sooner or later.

I will end this post with a Thank You to all of you that visit my blog, encourage me and press the Like-button on Facebook once in a while. It keeps me going.

Thanks.