So why a blog? Why now?

You know, that is a great question.    Way back in the day, when my website was on revision 1.x and had the domain name d33pblue.net, I had a blog.  Back then my photography was mostly casual and my blog was just a way for me to vent various personal ramblings from time to time.  It wasn’t an outlet for anything important and it was mainly used by people to pseudo-stalk me and keep track of what was doing.

Once my photography became more serious and I began to focus on building a more professional site, I decided to scrap the blog.  The blog wasn’t terribly professional – neither in its appearance or its content – and it was littered with spam from various bots.  At the time, ditching the blog I had was a welcome addition (by subtraction) to the site.  This is about the time I changed my domain name from d33pblue.net to jmhphoto.net.

Since then, over the past couple years, the number of websites with blogs has grown exponentially it seems.  Personal blogs, business blogs, news blogs, every kind of blog you can think of.  Blog usage amongst photographers grew from mostly an afterthought to almost a required feature.  What a lot of photographers would do is have a few “portfolio” pages on their website, and they would have their blog.  The blog was serve as a way to showcase recent work and to keep viewers updated on what they were doing.

So, why didnt I have a blog if it had proven so useful to other photographers? Well, I had my image archive and was quite proud of it.  I figure why have a blog showing a couple photos from each wedding when I could archive and display complete sets of images from every wedding I had shot.  I felt that scenario was superior than just displaying a couple images on a blog.  Secondly, I thought the personal ramblings were a bit distracting and a bit self centric.  So, for the longest time I never had a blog on my website.

So if you thought that way then, what changed now? Basically, I was looking for some useful content to add to my website and I decided to revisit the idea of implementing a blog.  A blog certainly didn’t have to replace my image archive, but it would be a nice supplement to it.  Also, unlike with a lot of things, I think choosing a wedding photographer can be a very personal thing for a lot of people.  It is not enough just to have a few good pictures on your website.  It is not enough just to have good pricing.  What many want is a friendly, honest, dependable professional that they can appreciate on a personal level to cover one of the most important days of their life.

How did I come to this conclusion? Well, almost all of the couples whose weddings I shoot ask to schedule a meeting with me before they hire me.  I have developed my website to include almost every piece of information a bride/groom might be interested in as far as wedding package pricing goes.  I get a few questions, but for the most part I have my bases covered there.  Why do people still ask to meet with me then?  Well, I believe “the meeting” isn’t a photography interview, its a personality interview.  People want to know if I’m nice, if I come across as honest, what my personality is like, and if they want me shooting their wedding.  The pricing and package information is secondary.  They have all of this at their fingertips on my website.  There is no need to schedule a meeting in person just for me to reiterate what I have already provided for them.

And this is a large part of what my blog will attempt to accomplish.  I think the blog will give potential clients a peek into who I am, how I work, and what I’m about.  I have an about me page, but that is only a snippet.  The blog will go further than that.  The blog will also help refresh the site a bit, add some search engine content, and get me a little higher in the page rankings than I am currently – and that is never a bad thing.

With all of that in mind, I draw my first blog post to a close.  Check back for frequent updates.