Why I’m Blogging Again After All These Years
When I first started photography (late 2008 or so), I dove in head first and never looked back. Admittedly, I had no idea what I was doing, but it was fun and I was learning a lot. I was inspired by Trey Ratcliff (who I met through work), and he was blogging every day, sharing a new photo, and talking about HDR all the time as well, so I started doing the same. I followed a lot of other photographers too, and it seemed everyone was blogging. It was fun.
For years I blogged several times per week, with each post containing some photos and a little snippet about the shoot itself (location, etc). It was a way to document my travels and my photographs, and I ended up connecting with more and more photographers that way (even making some lifelong friends).
Over time I added more and more content to my blog, like lists of the best photo spots in various cities that I had become familiar with (mostly through work travel), and lengthy written tutorials about various software products I was using to edit my images (as I developed my editing approach). I had a separate blog on the site dedicated to iPhone photographs. I had a list of my favorite motivational quotes. I had a list of great quotes about photography and art. I had a section with some of my favorite poems, and more. It was my version of a “lifestyle” blog, long before that was a thing (or at least before I was aware of such a thing).
(NOTE: I’ve since deleted all those old tutorials and nearly everything else I mentioned, but my top photo locations lists are still here, just not visible via any navigation links on the site, so they are only found via Google search nowadays. In other words, I hid them because it doesn’t align with my focus on education, but kept them active in case it helps anyone when they are searching.)
Sunset over Cannon Beach, OR captured from a drone
In fact, when I set up the blog initially it was called NomadicPursuits.com. This name was borne out of my interest in travel and other “pursuits” and I purposely did not want the word photo or photography in the name, because I did think of it as a “lifestyle” type of site, covering more than photography. Photography is a huge interest of mine, but not the only interest, and thus I was thinking in terms of sharing more about myself than just a single topic. I initially viewed it as a site covering a broad range of topics that I am interested in.
My website ended up being sort of a travel journal, a photography journal, and a photo education journal, plus a bit of lifestyle stuff thrown in for fun. But that left my attention spread across several categories, and honestly it’s not like I was getting a ton of traffic or earning very much through any of it. It was a passion project, and I loved it. But it was unfocused and haphazard, and honestly required a lot of work (and time) to create content in multiple categories.
But photo blogging peaked in the mid 2010’s or so (or at least it felt like it), and after a while I started posting less and less, eventually getting to where I rarely posted at all. This coincided with the continual rise of photo sharing on social media, namely Facebook and Instagram, but also many other sites. And social media sites do not want you to leave, so trying to get people to a blog got harder and harder, especially when they could already see the photo on social media. Traffic shrank and I didn’t have the time to focus on it, nor the interest, honestly. And of course I had a day job, so I wasn’t sitting around looking for things to do.
This also coincided with my focus on Youtube which began in 2017 or 2018, and the amount of time I spent building up my presence there. These two activities were inversely proportional: more time spent on Youtube left me with less time to write on the blog. So blogging ended up getting dropped, essentially.
A lovely sunrise in Colorado’s San Juan Mountains in the autumn (3 exposure HDR)
This also began a bit of a metamorphosis in my photography business. I love teaching photography and specifically photo editing, and Youtube is just a way better method for that than writing things out on the blog. Photo education, by its very nature, is visual, and video wins that easily. And once I reached a certain level of competence, I knew I could help those who were a step or two behind me in their development.
And even though my blog had become something I was proud of - and I enjoyed the multiple aspects of travel journaling, photo sharing, photo education, and lifestyle stuff - I found that my sweet spot was teaching editing and it was the aspect that I felt I could offer the most value in. So I got focused, dove in and haven’t looked back. This also coincided with a name change from NomadicPursuits.com to the much simpler jimnix.com. After all, the original name was too long and always required me to spell it for people. Plus, it’s my photography and using my name seemed easiest (though I still didn’t want the word photo included).
Nowadays my website (and the blog) is fully dedicated to photo education. I picked a subject and have stuck with it, and love it. I’ve dropped all the other aspects of my website/blog in favor of the subject I can help the most people with, and the one that feels like it exercises my creativity more than any other. And the bonus to all of this is that being more focused makes it easier to create content and write about (not EASY, just EASIER - it’s still a lot of work, but at least it’s only one category).
So that brings me back to the subject of this article, which is why I am back to blogging again after all these years.
Another 3 exposure HDR image from a different sunrise in Colorado during autumn
It’s simple - I love to write about this stuff. I love Youtube, and it’s been great to me, and I will keep creating content there for as long as I remain interested in doing so. But Youtube is really good at putting creators into boxes. If you stay in your box, you can potentially do well and your videos will find an audience (I’ve benefited from this to some degree). But if you step outside that box, your videos will tank fairly often (this has happened to me some as well). I think when you change things up, it confuses Youtube and they aren’t sure who to show your videos to. They can’t figure out your audience, because it’s outside the box you are “supposed” to be in.
I don’t want to publish lengthy articles on social media, because no one will read them (SM is for scrolling and quick likes these days, mostly), and as I said before, the social media sites don’t want you to share links and drive people off their site. That’s bad for them, so they tend to bury those anyway. Plus I’m not on social media as much as I used to be.
That means I don’t have an outlet to discuss these sorts of things - except here. And I need an outlet for it. The articles I publish here don’t work as a video, and if I did make them into a video it would be more like a podcast - and that doesn’t really align with my channel, which means Youtube would get confused again. I don’t have the time to make a podcast, and honestly I don’t have the interest. I’m busy enough. But I do like to talk (write) about these things, and enough of you show up and read, comment and interact that it tells me others enjoy this aspect of my work as well (and I appreciate that).
So I write on the blog about different aspects of photography, and topics related to photography and creativity and all that, and some of you read these articles (thank you) and interact with them as well. It’s just things that rattle around in my head, and my hope is that putting pen to paper (digitally speaking) will help me clarify what I am thinking, and also perhaps give someone out there something to think about too.
I’m just a guy who loves photography, and loves talking about it, and enjoys the discussion a lot. It’s fun for me, and educational, and hopefully it brings you some value too. Thanks for following along.
Sunrise on Cannon Beach, OR
