WRITING PROJECT: Social Photography
Photography has become a very social pastime with the uprise of digital cameras, the Internet, and photo-sharing websites. Photographers from all around the world are sharing their work, viewing the work of others, and making connections with people they would have otherwise never met. It's an amazing thing how social networking and photography have almost merged into one big culture: Social Photography.
PROJECT REQUIREMENTS
- Write a post on a blog and share your experience with social photography websites. See below for more details and examples.
- Go to the form at the bottom of this page and send me your name, email (kept private), and link to your project entry. If you don’t have your own blog, you can always ask to write a guest post on one of the many photography blogs out there.
- Once I collect the links from the participants I'll publish them on my blog. You can then write another post and link to either all or only your favorite articles by other bloggers.
- Limit one article per author for this particular project. You are more than welcome to visit other participating blogs hosting projects dedicated to other social media sites and take part in those projects (I'll explain more below).
DEADLINE: MARCH 22, 2008
This project is actually part of a larger project being termed “The Social Media Mega Project“. InspirationBit is hosting the mega-project, and I'm hosting a small portion of this project on photography related websites. Several other bloggers are hosting similar mini-projects to fill the gaps in the mega-project. These projects span the following topics:
- Digg, Reddit. Host: Vivien from Inspiration Bit
- del.icio.us. Host: Aaron Stroud from On Financial Success
- Facebook. Host: Ina from Inspiring Wear
- Anything photography related. Host: Brian Auer from Epic Edits
- Twitter, LinkedIn. Host: Isabella Mori from Change Therapy and Alphablogs
- StumbleUpon, YouTube, MySpace. Host: Karen Zara from a1-fan-fun
- Sphinn. Host Simonne from All Tips And Tricks
- Second Life. Host Dandellion from Metaverse
- Mixx, Propeller, Squidoo. Host: Pearl from Fresh Perspectives
- Sk*rt, Blogging Zoom, Bvibes. Host: JHS from Colloquium
- Technorati. Host: Monica from Me Like The Interweb
So if you can offer up your experience in any of those social sites listed above, feel free to visit the project pages and participate.
WHAT TO WRITE ABOUT…
As photographers we have a lot of options when it comes to social-based websites. We have the photo-sharing sites like Flickr and Zooomr. We have social media sites like photographyVoter and PictPicture. Then we also have some interactive sites like photophlow. Simply pick your favorite social site and choose a topic to write about that you feel comfortable with.
This topic could be how you integrate this social media site into your blogging, photography, or daily life. You could tell us about your good or bad experiences, how would you compare this social networking site with others, what do you like or don’t like about it, how you benefit from becoming a frequent user of this site, what secrets have you learned about it, and/or what tips or warnings would you like to inform others about. It can really be anything related to that site — just share what you know.
As a couple of examples right here from the archives of Epic Edits, Martin has already written about his Top 10 Flickr Hacks, and I've written about Flickr Etiquette. I'll actually be following up soon with a new article on photophlow, how to use it, what it can be used for, and the benefits of using it.
So start thinking about those social pholography sites that you use, and put together your thoughts on how you can share your experience with other photographers.
PROJECT ENTRY FORM
Sorry folks, the deadline for project submissions is over. Stay tuned for the project results on the 24th.
Chris
January 21, 2008Interesting project Brian, I’ll cobble something together.
the_wolf_brigade
January 21, 2008I’ll definitely give this a crack. While flickr will be the obvious choice for many, I think I may have a unique take on it that has been taking shape in my brain for the last week or so…
inspirationbit
January 21, 2008Hi Brian. Great write up for the project and its rules. I’ve updated my post, and replaced Flicks&Zooomr with “Anything photography related”. Could you please, also add that I’ll be hosting Digg and Reddit on InspirationBit, so if any of your readers would like to contribute their experience with those two sites, they’re more than welcome to do so.
Thanks and Good Luck with this project. I already can’t wait to see the results 🙂
isabella mori
January 22, 2008hello from a fellow project-er! (i’m the twitter and linkedin gal).
i sincerely hope there will be a post “flickr for dummies”. i am so very text oriented and am really quite clueless when it comes to all the visual stuff.
Tibor
January 22, 2008Brian, this is even greater than the self portrait project was! 🙂
Inspirational and really builds community.
Thanks for hosting your part, otherwise I wouldn’t have heard about the the mega project.
Tibor
the_wolf_brigade
January 22, 2008@isabella
“Flickr for dummies” is an intriguing concept. I often find myself helping fellow flickerites on their first photo post in a group etc. Would you care to expand on the issues you first found difficult? I think a user guide to flickr might be a neat idea…
isabella mori
January 22, 2008the very obvious things are quite easy, of course. but one of the difficulties i found was in making a set, and then finding the pic in both the set and the whole flickr account. i wanted to have it separate. but it looks like that’s not how it works.
inspirationbit
January 22, 2008also, what I think will be helpful is to put a how-to guide with quick tips on what’s possible to do with Flickr and how to do it. Perhaps derive from your own day to day experience with Flickr – how you yourself are using it. I often find that what’s obvious to me others might very fascinating.
CyberCarsten
January 22, 2008Wow, that’s not an easy task – will have to think over if I am willing to put in the necessary time.
Tibor
January 23, 2008Brian,
Could I use your great illustration with the pencils in my entry?
Best regards,
Tibor
Brian Auer
January 23, 2008Tibor, if it were a creation of my own I’d have no problem with it. But it’s a stock purchase from Dreamstime.com ($1), so legally I can’t distribute it.
David
January 23, 2008I’ll try!
Jose-Miguel
January 24, 2008I know this is English spoken site. My blog is in Spanish (I’m living in Barcelona-Catalonia), but wanted to say I’m glad of the opportunity to broad our knowledge.
Well done!
Samir
February 29, 2008From all of the PictPicture.com Team, thanks for writing about us! This is a great project Brian and we wish you well ! Let us know if there is anything we can help, we’re definitely more than happy to lend a hand !