{"id":213,"date":"2006-12-02T15:03:21","date_gmt":"2006-12-02T07:03:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whoisandrewwee.com\/213\/blogging-photos\/"},"modified":"2006-12-02T19:54:21","modified_gmt":"2006-12-02T11:54:21","slug":"blogging-photos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/blogging\/blogging-photos\/","title":{"rendered":"A Picture Can Bring A Thousand Clicks"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Besides purely doing text blogging, a blog can be spiced up by adding photos, graphics, audio content (podcast), videos and other forms of interactivity.<\/p>\n<p>By mixing up the media, it creates a new experience for your visitors.<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s some tips if you plan to use photos:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Create Impact<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Choosing the right photo, especially if it suits the theme of your post, (eg. matching a young bird to a post about newbie Internet Marketers) helps create a visual link between the content and the graphics.<\/p>\n<p>For example, I might like to illustrate my Internet Marketing lifestyle:<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Jimbaran\" title=\"Jimbaran\" src=\"http:\/\/www.whoisandrewwee.com\/images\/blog0612\/jimbaran.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Jimbaran Beach, Bali, Indonesia<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Walking along Jimbaran Beach every evening, as the sky changes from a amber to scarlet hue and as the sun sets behind the lush hills, I&#8217;m sitting on the beach, enjoying the slightly salty refreshing breeze, as I&#8217;m savoring the fresh local season, consuming calamari , lobster and prawns and enjoying the company of friends and family.<\/p>\n<p>That was nice, wasn&#8217;t it?<\/p>\n<p>For most blog templates, a photo works best if <!--more-->it has:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A width of 400-450 pixels (I favor 450 pixels)<\/li>\n<li>A landscape, rather than a portrait orientation (it&#8217;s wider than it is tall)<\/li>\n<li>Is in focus, with appropriate lighting<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Including a caption identifying the people in the photo helps.<\/p>\n<p>And if you are inclined towards adsense revenue, ads located below photos and images tend to have higher clickthrough rates.<br \/>\nOne important lesson I learned as a news photographer is to zoom in and compose &#8216;tight&#8217; shots.<\/p>\n<p>Tightly composed shots have greater emotional impact that ones that are far away.<\/p>\n<p>Consider the two contrasts:<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Ivan Wong and Andrew Wee\" title=\"Ivan Wong and Andrew Wee\" src=\"http:\/\/www.whoisandrewwee.com\/images\/blog0612\/ivanwong+andrewwee2.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>TheDowser keyword tool developer Ivan Wong and Andrew Wee<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Compared to:<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"Ivan Wong and Andrew Wee\" title=\"Ivan Wong and Andrew Wee\" src=\"http:\/\/www.whoisandrewwee.com\/images\/blog0612\/ivanwong+andrewwee.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Ivan Wong and Andrew Wee<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Going in close will give you a greater connection with the subjects in the photos.<br \/>\nIf you&#8217;re not up to shooting your own photos, I like to use images from photo archives. You might like to check out:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a target=\"_blank\" title=\"Sxc.hu\" href=\"http:\/\/www.sxc.hu\">Sxc.hu<\/a> (I use this for most of the photos you see on this blog)<\/li>\n<li><a target=\"_blank\" title=\"Liquid Library\" href=\"http:\/\/www.liquidlibrary.com\">LiquidLibrary.com<\/a> (Recommended, but I haven&#8217;t used it yet)<\/li>\n<li><a target=\"_blank\" title=\"ShuPhotos\" href=\"http:\/\/www.ShuPhotos.com\">ShuPhotos.com<\/a> (Not used it either)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Aside from resizing the photos and adjust brightness and contrast, I haven&#8217;t done much photo editing.<\/p>\n<p>For those on a budget, open source image editor <a target=\"_blank\" title=\"GIMP\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gimp.org\">GIMP<\/a> (GNU Image Manipulation Program) is a good choice.<\/p>\n<p>If your needs are greater, go for Adobe Photoshop.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Besides purely doing text blogging, a blog can be spiced up by adding photos, graphics, audio content (podcast), videos and other forms of interactivity. By mixing up the media, it creates a new experience for your visitors. Here&#8217;s some tips if you plan to use photos: Create Impact Choosing the right photo, especially if it [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[24],"tags":[1767,301],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/whoisandrewwee.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}