If I could go back to the beginning of my blogging career, I would give myself this advice:
- Forget Blogger — go to WordPress and do not pass go.
- Buy your own domain and hosting so that you don’t have to be stuck with an ugly, hard-to-remember URL.
- Learn to take proper photos.
- Learn how to resize photos.
- Upload to secure storage so inserting photos into blogs is easier.
Notice a trend in those last three bullets? Blogging is about information, sure, but who wants to scroll through all that text?
The truth is — you HAVE to have good photos. The trick is — you HAVE to have good photos that are easy to find and use.
So, I put together a little video (it’s only 7 minutes, and I walk you through the entire process) on my photo blogging cheats. It’s embedded below, but if you can’t see it, you can view it on YouTube here.
A few points of information:
- I use a point and shoot camera (no fancy DSLR here!), but I do use all the bells and whistles that it came with — the biggest timesaver for me is lighting and framing the photo properly before snapping the first picture. Ideally, I upload the photo without having to crop or edit in Photoshop. Use your macro function, people. And a tripod.
- I have an Eye-Fi wireless card that lets me move photos to my computer without any USB cords or card reader. It’s a pretty good tool (although can take a while, so if I’m doing a lot of photos, I plug the camera in).
- I didn’t go over it in the video, but I love love LOVE the Name Mangler app for Mac — it lets me bulk edit titles of photos, add a number for a series of shots (Katy 1, Katy 2, Katy 3, etc.), change the type (.gif, .jpg, etc.) and more.
- In the video, I mention Automator (a Mac shortcut/actions builder) and the plugin Flickr Photo Album.
- I have a pro account on Flickr, but there are free versions available that will do the job just fine.
- (This one’s not about blogging, but still…) When my hard drive crashed, I thought I’d have to download my Flickr photos to my desktop, one by one. Then I found the Bulkr app. Saved my sanity.
What else can I help with when it comes to blogging? Do you want more details on how to take and edit photos? Other plugins that I love? Why I prefer WordPress over Blogger? Leave me a comment and I’ll work on a how-to video to answer your questions!
About Katy
OMG! You have no idea how helpful this video is to me. I am brand new to wordpress and was a bit overwhelmed by it but you have made it that much simpler. I cannot thank you enough. I would love to know why you prefer wordpress over blogger. This was something I fought with myself over in choosing a site.
Millie,
I’ll add that to the list of upcoming posts!
Thanks that was great! Do you know of a program that can down size photos with a PC? This was really helpful. I was about to transfer my photos to Flickr and i was just going to figure it out but you saved me the time.
Denise —
My husband is on a PC and he uses this free program:
http://www.fotosizer.com/
Here are another two good options I use on the PC for resizing images
Ifranview (http://www.irfanview.com/) is free and directions are here: http://www.ofzenandcomputing.com/zanswers/1028
And Google’s Picasa is pretty good too.
Directions:
http://graphicssoft.about.com/od/picasa/ss/resizemultiples.htm
Sean — thank you SO MUCH! I knew my readers would jump in and save the day.
Can I just say how happy I am that I found you in the blog-world? I love all the blogs I read for many different reasons, but you always have the most informative, useful and insightful posts. This is wonderful! Thanks so much for sharing!
Carly,
Side note — have I mentioned that that’s one of my favorite names? Is it short for something?
Your comment just made my week. Thank you so much!
It’s the truth – I love your blog!
Nope, I’m just Carly. I’m from a very Irish Catholic family and was expected to be a Patricia or an Abigail or a Maureen. My mom wanted to be a little different!
Wow, thanks for this post! I wish I had known this stuff last year! I could not for the life of me figure out how to resize my photos and about half the time they would be too big. I’m not blogging much anymore, but this is still really helpful! Thanks!
Don’t feel too bad…I shudder when I look at some of my early posts. They’re a MESS — bad pictures, terrible lighting, tiny thumbnails in big long posts.
Practice makes perfect…or closer to it, anyway.
I would love to see a blog post about taking and editing photos. I don’t have a DSLR and I would love to read a post about taking photos from someone who doesn’t have a DSLR either. I just found your blog, and I look forward to reading!
Seconding this!
I’m an IT guy so I got all the technical things down but I’m very photo challeneged!
Great job and thanks for the video, Katy!
C.J.
Great idea! I wish someone had shown me a few tricks a while ago…let me start working on a “basics of photography” post, or at least collect some how-to guides from people who know it even better than me.
I’m so glad I found this, thank you for posting!! I have a little problem with how long my blog takes to load and I think it’s the ginormous photo sizes I’ve been posting.
When I right-click, Automator is not an option. I followed your link to Automator above, but I’m not sure what they are talking about in the instructions? Should I follow their advice step-by-step, or is there an easier way to get it to do exactly what you showed? (re-size photos from the desktop?) Thanks for your help!
J,
Do you have a Mac? If so, you have to right click then look for the “More” link. Hover over that and you’ll see the Automator link.
You can also open the Automator program through Applications and drag your photos into it that way.
If you have Windows, let me know and I’ll get you some more options!
Re-sizing success!
I do have a Mac, but “more” isn’t an option when I right click photos for some reason. I dragged the photos into Automator and followed your steps and it worked perfectly. Thanks again for your help!
i know i’m late to the game but i just stumbled across this – i’m always looking for different photo options for my blog and was curious about flickr.
I recently came across your blog and I love it! I’ve just started doing social media in my job (for a company who’d never before done anything) and I’m also in the process of completely updating their website, uploading hundreds of images. This video has saved my life!! I have a Mac and Automater is my new best friend. Thank you!