May 14, 2013 / News

Coming Soon: Photography 101

Here, we focus on the art and craft of blogging — sharing tips to write more and better, hosting writing challenges to push ourselves and polish our craft, and establishing a space to interact with and learn from others.

Everyone’s “blogging process” is different, from our approach and content to our reasons and goals. For most of you in this community, words take center stage. Yet blogs are very visual platforms, and telling our stories with images is a huge part of the process. Our weekly photo challenges, ever so popular, illustrate this.

We know many of you publish photos on your sites, so we’re excited to dive deeper into the world of photography. In an upcoming series, we’ll introduce the basics — and push you to think about your site with a visual eye and enhance your posts with images.

With the help of guest photographers in our community, we’ll cover the essentials: composition (framing a shot and figuring out what type of image works best for a post); point of view (the position from where you take a picture, like from above, as Sara illustrated in a recent weekly photo challenge); color; shape, line, texture, and pattern; and light.

Then, we’ll take what we’ve learned and discover how to approach blogging with images in mind:

  • experimenting with effects in the post-production stage
  • selecting and presenting the right images for a post
  • deciding when is best to use a gallery, slideshow, or embedded images
  • recording details and metadata

Along the way, we’ll share specific tips to get the most out of the features in your dashboard and themes on WordPress.com — and learn which tools and designs are best for you and your blog.

We’re currently scouting for photographers interested in contributing tutorials and tips for this series — particularly those who display exemplary work in the field. If you have favorite photographers on WordPress.com who fit this description, let us know in the comments. Tell us, too, if you’re interested in learning something specific.

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  2. Hey team, I have been blogging about my DSLR photography journey from a complete beginner to now (5 years later) and would be delighted to contribute to this in anyway you find appropriate. I have some tech articles for beginners and also a couple on composition in a bit of detail etc

    http://lensaddiction.wordpress.com/

    And I will also +1 for Leanne Cole too 🙂

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  4. Hi there!

    Very nice idea 🙂 As a photoblogger myself, I like to take advice from the following two WordPress blogs myself:

    * Life, Photography and other Mistakes at Smithies Shutter: http://smithiesshutter.wordpress.com/ – John shows many examples of HDR photography. I haven’t tried it myself yet, but once I do I am sure I will ask for some of his advice!

    * Mel Mann Photography: http://melmannphoto.wordpress.com/ – I go here not only to study the photos, but Mel also regularly puts advice up on composition, leading lines, B&W vs colour etc.

    Looking foward to these news series.

    Suze

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  7. I am looking forward to your series. The photos take the centre stage in my blog http://www.unteteatete.wordpress.com but I have now decided to develop the writing part a bit further as I was told by readers that they really enjoyed the stories behing the portraits. I would be very interested in reading more about this. Also If you think I can be of any help for the series, I would be happy to do so.

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  11. Reblogged this on gossip and solitude and commented:
    My word of the year is learn, and it looks like I can defintitely learn something from Photography 101. Plus, I don’t have to go to a class and be intimidated by the gorgeous work of others. I can learn from my own little computer, iPad, or phone and do some experimenting. Looking forward to it!

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  12. I would love to be a part of this. Beyond my professional photography work (www.quarryhouse.us). I teach photography in classes for all sorts of groups and cliends, focusing on teaching “how to see” more than technique and technology. It would be fascinating to try and to this in blog like forum instead of an interactive class.

    TOm

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  16. Ron Dudley has a beautiful blog called Feathered Photography. He’s a retired biology teacher who takes professional quality bird and wildlife ohotos

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  17. Very exciting. !!!!!! This going to be so interesting to see what … will be published.
    Have started to look at the world from an ant’s level .. and it’s a very interesting world and totally different from my upright one.

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  19. I have started blogging (mostly photo blogging) just a few months back. Since my interests lie at the cross of writing and photography, I try to do something that I have seen few photographers do.
    Photographers truly believe that a picture is worth thousand words. But they never try to express those words! I try to do so in the “Writegoraphy” section of my (infant) blog.
    Here is the link to that section: http://myriadmoods.com/category/writeography/

    Looking forward to this series!

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  21. I shall so look forward to reading those posts. I love to take pictures and share my experience as I look through my camera with others (I’m just a self taught amateur photographer).
    Looking forward to learning more and improving my blog photos.

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  22. My main blog is for my photography…I don’t really “blog” and incorporate photos; my photos are the focus of the blog. However, I would definitely be interested in learning some things, and contributing if you want. 🙂

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  23. I’m looking forward to the series especially as I’ve been absent for a while. Some of the photographers I wanted to add have already been mentioned and there are many more I could think of. Here are a few more brilliant WP photographers:
    http://munchow.wordpress.com/

    Home page

    http://windagainstcurrent.com/http://leannecolephotography.com/http://lensandpensbysally.wordpress.com/http://marantophotography.wordpress.com/http://mikehardisty.wordpress.com/http://rutheh.com/http://joshidaniel.com/

    The Urge To Wander – Home

    http://youthinkyoucanblog.wordpress.com/http://createabeautifullife.com/http://creativityaroused.wordpress.com/

    Okay, I better stop now as more brilliant names come to mind and I suspect you want just a few from us.
    Cheers,
    Elizabeth

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  24. Fantastic idea! I love incorporating the right images into a post and definitely spend a great deal of time taking what I hope is a quality photograph. Blogging has not only made me appreciate the amount of time it takes to write well (I don’t always succeed, but lord knows I’m trying my best!), but has also rekindled my love of photography. Looking forward to following this series!

    Cheers!
    G-LO

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  25. This sounds exciting – I started blogging as a way to add context to my photos. WordPress is such a great platform for that and offers so many visual options

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  27. hi Cheri,
    The risk for photographers is always to end up in kitsch or getting stuck in the Cliche. The message is usually much more important than artisan details.

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    1. hi Cheri, I’ve downloaded my WORDPRESS archive and – as you wrote: “I saw how I’ve changed: my shift in interests, an evolving network of friends and followers …” – and, following bravely to your topics at the Weekly Photo Challenge, I see clearer now, step by step, which are the most interesting topics / terms / tags / messages – many of your ideas have been inspiring – thank you for that!

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