# My travel photography blog - what do you think?



## EONOnly (Jan 3, 2013)

Hello everybody!

I was thinking about starting my own travel photography blog for a long time. When I got some photo content, I decided to run a blog that will feature both photos and short written paragraphs telling about my trips to countries like China or Japan. Here is what I ended up with:

Blur My Reality

What do you think? I'd love to get some opinions about layout, photos and written content - English is not my native language, so I'm kind of worried that my storytelling is not as good as it should be.

Thanks!


----------



## tirediron (Jan 3, 2013)

Very nice photography!  To be honest, blogs don't interest me much regardless of their content, but I did read through some of your entries, and while it's clear that English is not your native language, I had no problem understanding your prose.


----------



## EONOnly (Jan 3, 2013)

tirediron said:


> Very nice photography!  To be honest, blogs don't interest me much regardless of their content, but I did read through some of your entries, and while it's clear that English is not your native language, I had no problem understanding your prose.



I guess I have to try harder then. Readers understanding one's prose is definitely not enough when it comes to writing. Thank you very much for your opinion and for your kind words on my photography!


----------



## shents (Jan 3, 2013)

EONOnly said:


> Hello everybody!
> 
> I was thinking about starting my own travel photography blog for a long time. When I got some photo content, I decided to run a blog that will feature both photos and short written paragraphs telling about my trips to countries like China or Japan. Here is what I ended up with:
> 
> ...



Really looking forward to reading it I am off to china in march!!.. I should have done a a blog on my travels


----------



## The_Traveler (Jan 3, 2013)

I must admit that I have a very distinct bias about travel blogs, even those oriented towards photography.  I like to read some text that tells me something interesting about the people and their involvement in the travel - and have that text illustrated with images.
Your text is rathr bland and impersonal for my taste and the pictures are almost generic and not tied too well to the text.


Lew


----------



## EONOnly (Jan 3, 2013)

shents said:


> Really looking forward to reading it I am off to china in march!!.. I should have done a a blog on my travels



March in China, depending on where exactly you are heading, might be quite cold, so don't forget warm jackets and sweaters! I'm sure you're gonna love your trip though.



The_Traveler said:


> I must admit that I have a very distinct bias about travel blogs, even those oriented towards photography.  I like to read some text that tells me something interesting about the people and their involvement in the travel - and have that text illustrated with images.
> Your text is rathr bland and impersonal for my taste and the pictures are almost generic and not tied too well to the text.



Thank you very much for your opinion. Getting personal and showing people involved in the travel is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. So, in a way, your negative comment is a positive one to me  I really like your monochromatic shots - some really nice ones on your website.


----------



## shents (Jan 3, 2013)

Really looking forward to reading it I am off to china in march!!.. I should have done a a blog on my travels[/QUOTE]

March in China, depending on where exactly you are heading, might be quite cold, so don't forget warm jackets and sweaters! I'm sure you're gonna love your trip though.



The_Traveler said:


> I must admit that I have a very distinct bias about travel blogs, even those oriented towards photography.  I like to read some text that tells me something interesting about the people and their involvement in the travel - and have that text illustrated with images.
> Your text is rathr bland and impersonal for my taste and the pictures are almost generic and not tied too well to the text.



Thank you very much for your opinion. Getting personal and showing people involved in the travel is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. So, in a way, your negative comment is a positive one to me  I really like your monochromatic shots - some really nice ones on your website.[/QUOTE]


Any recommendations would be great, We are off to Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu, XIan , Leshan (BIG BUDDHA).. Thought It was going to be cold, but not long got back from Thailand so had my summer hols .. Wasted shiiiit loads of holidays with a crappy camera , just bought nikon d5100 for china.. Love your great wall shot, I need to learn how to do that!


----------



## sm4him (Jan 3, 2013)

EONOnly said:


> Thank you very much for your opinion. *Getting personal and showing people involved in the travel is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. *So, in a way, your negative comment is a positive one to me  I really like your monochromatic shots - some really nice ones on your website.



Might I ask:
WHY are you trying to avoid getting personal in your blog? And, since that is the case, what ARE you trying to accomplish with your blog?  Knowing what you want the blog to be is a huge part of determining how it should be written.

IMO: The photos are very nice and keep my attention so that I want to keep looking at other blog entries from you. That's definitely a plus.
Your writing needs serious work, but not really because of your English issues.  The only major problem I see there is a need to watch your verb tenses; you have a tendency to switch from past tense to present tense in the same sentence and it makes it sound awkward.
The real issue though is that your blog, imo, is neither personal enough to be interesting on that level, nor is it *informative* enough to be useful as a "what to do when you visit" type of travel blog.
You have just enough of a sense of humor showing through in your writing that I think you could do the personal blog style pretty well, but if that's not what you want, then perhaps you could clarify what you ARE trying to accomplish with it?


----------



## The_Traveler (Jan 3, 2013)

EONOnly said:


> Thank you very much for your opinion. Getting personal and showing people involved in the travel is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. So, in a way, your negative comment is a positive one to me  .



I'm happy you took my comment in the spirit it was meant.
If you read the travel entries in my blog, they  are diametrically opposite of your style. Each to his own.
I'm off to Myanmar in 4 weeks.


----------



## EONOnly (Jan 3, 2013)

sm4him said:


> EONOnly said:
> 
> 
> > Thank you very much for your opinion. *Getting personal and showing people involved in the travel is exactly what I'm trying to avoid. *So, in a way, your negative comment is a positive one to me  I really like your monochromatic shots - some really nice ones on your website.
> ...



Because that blog was supposed to be more about photography and less about writing. Short paragraphs was supposed to give enough storytelling background to the photos to make them authentic, but not to draw attention. I'm not a fan of blogs where travelers write in chronological order and show photos of them hugging with local people. The idea was to show photos that are not chronologically correct and not related to the text. Doing the other way would force me to publish photos that are not good enough just because they would fit the text. I don't want to show people what I was doing when I was somewhere - I want to show them what I saw and what THEY could do there.

On the other hand - maybe it's not that bad idea to get a little bit more personal? I'm just not sure how to do so. It's the first time I'm writing a blog and the first time I'm using English to show my real thoughts. What do you think might improve my blog? Getting more specific about places I've seen or whether I liked them or not? Writing about situations that happened to us while traveling and about people we've met?

Thank you for pointing out my problem with tenses. I'm constantly changing some small errors and I'd definitely try to read everything again in order to find errors that you are referring to.


----------



## The_Traveler (Jan 3, 2013)

Right now the pictures are just nice, but disconnected, images; there's no direct relationship to the text. The text and images don't support each other so there is no added benefit to looking at your blog over looking at random pictures of Asia.


----------



## EONOnly (Jan 7, 2013)

The_Traveler said:


> Right now the pictures are just nice, but disconnected, images; there's no direct relationship to the text. The text and images don't support each other so there is no added benefit to looking at your blog over looking at random pictures of Asia.



Thanks, I'll try to write slightly more personal and see how it goes. Maybe it's not that bad idea after all


----------



## shesnotmia (Jan 7, 2013)

I love mixing blogging and photography.  Your blog is great!  The photos are wonderful!


----------



## rutherford (Jan 10, 2013)

Maybe I've missed out on some but I think a few of those city shots might look better taken at night, the light isn't making things that interesting.


----------



## Alex_B (Jan 10, 2013)

What I see so far is clean and simple. Nice!

No as cluttered as my own travel blog PhotoScapes - A Photographic Travel Blog by Alexander Thorsten Blumenau ... which also somehow deviated from travel 

I wonder once your blog grows, you might need some sub-structure to organise things in the blog.


----------



## EONOnly (Jan 10, 2013)

rutherford said:


> Maybe I've missed out on some but I think a few of those city shots might look better taken at night, the light isn't making things that interesting.



I have no idea why would I take some of my shots during night. During dusk or dawn? Perhaps, but my blog is about travel photography and traveling is not about waiting for the dusk to take one photo. I'd rather do and see more than wait for the perfect lighting 



Alex_B said:


> What I see so far is clean and simple. Nice!
> 
> No as cluttered as my own travel blog PhotoScapes - A Photographic Travel Blog by Alexander Thorsten Blumenau ... which also somehow deviated from travel
> 
> I wonder once your blog grows, you might need some sub-structure to organise things in the blog.



Nice blog, Alex_B! I don't think your blog is cluttered - I find it quite simple for the amount of content. I guess I'll worry about organizing my blog when it grows. I'm running it for only one month now!


----------



## Dikkie (Jan 18, 2013)

I really like the website. Plain and simple.
Great photography btw!


----------



## cgipson1 (Jan 18, 2013)

I like it! Simple and direct... not overly verbose. You let the images tell the story....


----------



## flow (Jan 18, 2013)

I understand where you're going with leaving the personal details out ... but sometimes you really should have a correlation between what you write and what the pictures show. For example - in your Hong Kong entry, you talk about how fantastic the views are from Victoria Peak ... but no shots to share that view with the readers? Nothing to convince us that it's really as good as you say (or just for us to ogle at)? It leaves the reader hanging, wondering what happened to those images.


----------



## sekhar (Jan 18, 2013)

For what you want to do, IMO you should focus on the images and minimize or skip the writing completely. I.e., fill it with memorable images, making visitors come back for more. Telling a story through images alone is hard, but can be many times more powerful than with words because it lets the viewers fill the gaps with their own experiences (meaning we all experience your blog differently). Basically, what the movie folks do to us.

I like your images, but they seem random and don't follow a theme (at least nothing I could discern). Sticking to a theme will mean you'll need to leave out images you think are great, but IMO that enhances your blog. The look/feel of the images on your blog is also different, and the layout is odd (I suggest at the minimum centering the images) - both of which are really easy to fix. I'd also put a background to your website to create the mood, instead of leaving it blank.

I suggest looking at what others are doing. One site that is like what I'm suggesting is the blog from Steve McCurry, the guy I immensely admire. Note that his "blog" is really a list of spectacular images with virtually no text other than some quotes.


----------



## EONOnly (Jan 19, 2013)

flow said:


> I understand where you're going with leaving the personal details out ... but sometimes you really should have a correlation between what you write and what the pictures show. For example - in your Hong Kong entry, you talk about how fantastic the views are from Victoria Peak ... but no shots to share that view with the readers? Nothing to convince us that it's really as good as you say (or just for us to ogle at)? It leaves the reader hanging, wondering what happened to those images.



Picture from Victoria Peak is in the first post. I think it's pointless to publish it twice just for the sake of following the text.



sekhar said:


> For what you want to do, IMO you should focus on the images and minimize or skip the writing completely. I.e., fill it with memorable images, making visitors come back for more. Telling a story through images alone is hard, but can be many times more powerful than with words because it lets the viewers fill the gaps with their own experiences (meaning we all experience your blog differently). Basically, what the movie folks do to us.
> 
> I like your images, but they seem random and don't follow a theme (at least nothing I could discern). Sticking to a theme will mean you'll need to leave out images you think are great, but IMO that enhances your blog. The look/feel of the images on your blog is also different, and the layout is odd (I suggest at the minimum centering the images) - both of which are really easy to fix. I'd also put a background to your website to create the mood, instead of leaving it blank.
> 
> I suggest looking at what others are doing. One site that is like what I'm suggesting is the blog from Steve McCurry, the guy I immensely admire. Note that his "blog" is really a list of spectacular images with virtually no text other than some quotes.



Thank you for your opinion! I love McCurry's blog (I even have it in my link section), but his layout is absolutely horrible - crowded and distracting. Background images are also something that I really dislike - not to mention that they usually slow down the page significantly.


----------

