Take a Picture Already — End of the Day for February 16, 2014

I’ve always been one to take a lot of photos, but you may have noticed more photos lately in my social media streams and here on the blog. I figure that I always take photos, so why not share them more widely and see what results. I often use these photos to illustrate my other blog posts, like the those in the “Interesting Plant“, “Garden Alphabet” and “New Food” series here and on A Gardener’s Notebook. Bloggers always need photos for their blog posts and I believe that the best one’s you can use are those you take yourself. This prevents any copyright issues and somewhat guarantees that you have the photos you most want to use.

View a slide show my Flickr Photostream

Photos are an important part of any blog post. They make it more attractive, help illustrate the point and also give a visual element when the blog posts are shared on Pinterest. Google+, Facebook and Twitter. There are so many reasons for taking and using photos, I am often surprised when other bloggers don’t use them.

My photo subjects range as widely as the subjects of my blogs. One day I will be shooting flowers, the next a family event and the next photos to illustrate a recipe I recently made. Sometimes people wonder if it isn’t a lot of work to take photos, but I always figure that it is no extra work, really. I am going to be doing something or attending an event anyway Why not take some photos to remember the event, share with the other’s involved and also end up with content for the blogs. It seems I am getting 2 or 3 times the effect for the simply effort of taking a couple of pictures.

A recent trip to the Antelope Valley Indian Museum in Palmdale, CA

Someone, a long time ago, told me the best way to take great pictures is to take a lot of pictures. Today’s phones and smaller cameras make it easy to carry a camera wherever you go, so why not use it. When something catches you eye — take a picture. When you see something you might use to illustrate a blog post, school or business presentation, charity project — take a picture. Even if you think something might be only interesting to you — take a picture. It can only benefit you in the future!

Typically, you can find all of my photos on my Flickr account where I tend to upload everything that might be of use. View a slide show my Flickr Photostream. This isn’t every picture I took, but rather a cull of those things that might be interesting to myself and others. I also tend to post items to my Facebook Wall, especially family and school-felted items so that others can tag them and share them with their friends and family. A subset of my pictures also appear on Instagram, although those only include photos I shared through the Instagram app. You’ll see these photos included in my Flickr, Facebook and Google+ streams, too. As for Google+, I am sharing photo sets there more frequently, but you’ll already find links to sets and collections posts to the blogs and other accounts. Finally, links to all my photos also appear in my Twitter stream. So, you should never be at a lost to find my photos on whichever service you use most frequently. You’ll also find I share a lot of blog posts from other sources on how to improve your photography or just enjoy it more. Watch my social media feeds for those posts.

I hope you enjoy my photos. If so, please take a moment to Like, Favorite and Share them with our friends. The more people that see them, the better. If you REALLY like something, and would like to include it in your publication, advertisement or web site — i’ll give you a good price for licensing it. Drop me a line!

Previously on End of the Day: