If you come here regularly, you may recall a post from a couple of weeks ago, stating I was going to start a photoblog, and I was looking for suggestions on software.
It came down to 2 packages… WordPress, and Pixel Post. They both have advantages and disadvantages. I really wanted to use WordPress, because I’m pretty familiar with it, and I just like it, a lot. Pixel Post has the initial advantage of being specifically made for photoblogs, so there is less configuration needed to start.
After much debate, and playing around with each… I’ve gone with Pixel Post. My thanks go out to everyone for your suggestions.
I’ll be the first to say that WordPress is actually far superior as far as blogging software goes. It’s infinitely more flexible, scalable, and manageable… but I came to the conclusion that it is way overkill for what I wanted to do. My plans are much more modest.
If you’re interested in setting up a basic photoblog, you may want to give Pixel Post a serious look. It’s easy to set up and get going quickly. The only time you’ll spend is in tweaking the template, if you choose to go that route. My only real complaint about Pixel Post is some of the documentation seems a bit out of date. The developer community for Pixel Post is much smaller than WordPress, so I think things tend to fall through the cracks a little more.
So, by this point you’re probably saying, just give me the link to your new site already. Ok, ok… the site is called Highly Subjective. It isn’t completely finished yet. I still have some tweaks to do. I hope to be finalizing it this week.
The name comes for the old notion that “pictures don’t lie”… you’ve heard that saying, right? Well, I couldn’t disagree more. Pictures do lie… because they are open to interpretation. All photos should be treated as ‘highly subjective’. I’ll be getting more into that when I get around to writing the ‘about’ section of the new site.
My goal is to post a picture a day. Ideally, that would mean shooting a picture a day, but I’m not sure how realistic that’s going to be with my schedule. This weekend was beautiful, so I took the opportunity to go out and dust off my photography skills. I was definitely a little rusty.
The last time I was really into photography, I lived in a much more rural area, in Arizona. Now that I live in the city (San Francisco), I am somewhat fascinated by random happenings on the street. I don’t have a lot of experience shooting people, especially out in the wild, so I thought this was a good way to get back on the horse. I kind of wanted to push myself into new directions.
It felt a little odd starting the site with just one image, so I went ahead and populated it with several of the images I shot this weekend. I’ll hopefully be starting the one-a-day posting, tomorrow.
Hey, great job with the photoblog. Photographs have a very cinematic feel to them.
Thanks, glad you like it. I hadn’t really thought of them as cinematic, but now that you say that… I can see it too.
i love it, it ceases to amaze me paul how you can make a site look so f*ing awesome…..like I started a pixel post a while back and mine doesnt look half as good, so I may be stealing your theme hehe…well Simple Visions at least…if you dont mind that is.
Thanks Brad, glad you like it. Once I finish tweaking the template, I’ll be releasing it for everyone to use.
suhweet…..that’s awesome b/c I’m not sure I like mine http://bssl.insidestretch.com/gallery. And I tried Simple-Visions and I was like wow….Paul definitely tweaked this. Awesome news, I’m getting a Rebel XT in about a month and I couldn’t be anymore excited.
Wow Paul, gotta say I am floored. Absolutely beautiful site and photos.
I have a question for you: How do you not get really weird looks from these people you are photographing? Whenever I’m out in public with my camera, I find it very difficult to be able to take a photograph without inadvertantly interfering with the subject. I feel like I have to be James Bond to get a shot that I want.
Thanks Tim.
I don’t have a lot of experience with this type of shooting, so I don’t have any great words of wisdom to pass along.
It can definitely be very intimidating… you want to take the shot, but you don’t want to raise the camera for fear of a reaction by the people you want to shoot… will they stop doing what they’re doing? Will they come over here and beat the crap out of me?
I guess my best advice would be… be casual, and quick. Try to mentally compose the image before you raise the camera to your eye. Or, you can sometimes “shoot from the hip”, meaning you don’t take the time to look through the camera, you just point it and press.
You can try to be as discreet as possible, but in the end I think it often comes down to… shoot, and hope for the best.
yeah, i was wondering how you did that tooo…hehe shoot from the hip, but hey w/e works.