Photoblogs pt. 1

Aside from describing different types of blogs in a “here they are” manner, I haven’t looked at any other type of blog beside the basic written one. While they are the most prevalent, there are other types out there – and they are gaining popularity.

Among them is the photoblog; if we consider regular blogs literature or journalism, this blog is the complements. The photoblog can be either journalistic, artistic or even voyeuristic. The possibilities are limited only by the author/photographer. So what is the deal with photoblogs?

They are similar to traditional blogs in that they cover a wide range of topics and are regularly updated. However, photoblogs are less immediate and impulsive than blogs. According to Kris R. Cohen in Media, Culture & Society,

In talking to photobloggers, a couple of common and important ways of doing the photoblog quickly emerge. First, photobloggers tend to take a lot of photographs; most say that they take more photographs than they ever have, and that the photoblog is not only a repository for these images, but a tactic for achieving just this proliferation. So, they like to have photographs, but also, and crucially, the photographic act – looking for photographs, composing, taking, reviewing, showing – becomes newly enjoyable and newly heterogeneous in the broad context of doing a photoblog. (887)

I say photoblogs are less immediate and impulsive because the blogger cannot create photos with only their computer; they have to take photos, edit them to web-acceptable sizes, and also choose what to display. There is inherently more editing in photoblogging than regular blogging; the only opportunity a writer has to edit is while writing, yet a photographer edits in both the composition stage and in choosing what to post.

But generally speaking, the photoblogger has the same goal of sharing and communicating that the text blogger does – especially considering that they too focus on, according to Cohen, “what they call ‘the everyday,’ the ‘banal’ or the ‘mundane.”… Most photobloggers say that ‘real life’ is the desired content of their photographs.”