Today we have Heather and Donnell from The Photo Junkies. This blog is a wonderful resource for all things photography, not to mention laugh out loud funny. There is a great post on something that scares me to death, off camera flash. Welcome Heather and Donnell!
Heather: All things photography! It’s really geared toward everyone from the interested, to the novice and sometimes the professional. For this reason our subject matter can range anywhere from the nonsensical to the down right technical. All people who love photography have had the same questions at one point or another, so we are just a cyclone of topics we have always wanted to know about and things we “think” we have figured out.
Donnell: You definitely do not have to be a photographer to enjoy our blog! Plus, I’m pretty sure everyone wants to be a photog deep down, so we are just catering to those secret desires.
Donnell: We started The Photo Junkies in December and life hasn’t been the same since!
Heather: I have a personal family blog that I have been intermittently neglectful of for many years as well as my photography business blog (1+ years), but The Photo Junkie’s blog is a whole different animal, people actually read it and therefore it is much more satisfying to work on.
Heather: The blog started as a result of us toying with the idea of trying to bring our instant messages into a format we could share with others. We enjoyed our own banter and “wide” range of interests and thought “hey, maybe other people would too!” Donnell whipped us up a snappy logo and blog and the rest is a mystery… er, I mean history.
Donnell: Well, having a blog of any sort was the brain baby of what Heather just said (our IM’s really are quite ridiculous), but The Photo Junkies as we know it was born out of the need to have somewhere to post information and registration links about the photography classes we do locally. Just links to register for classes seemed pretty lame on it’s own, so we thought why not add some extra content. The list of topics snowballed quite rapidly from there.
Donnell: Since photography is the type of profession where you are continually confused… I mean, learning… we will usually post about whatever topic we are currently struggling with. Which is really just code for the fact that we are very random! On occasion I will do a “Smackdown” post which is more of a commentary on hot topics that I feel strongly about, such as what is an amateur vs. professional, etc. I try not to beat the dead horse, but rather add my own insight/two cents to the convo. We also love silently stalking other photographers that have amazing work or do something super cool… and then we badger them until they agree to a Junkie Interview (done via instant message, of course!).
Heather: Our instant message conversation archives provide an abundance of topics to choose from. We’ve merely scratched the surface at this point.
Heather: I would say we blog because there is not enough room in our brain to contain all of our fleeting fancies. We needed a storage medium.
Donnell: Word.
Donnell: Finding the time, fo’ sho. We (usually) try to do a Daily Photo Fix (images picked from our Flickr group that readers submit to), something halfway informational, and then if we are really ambitious a third post. Plus miscellaneous contests, interviews, sharing, rants… whatever. Every day. Plus, let’s not forget about the whole mom/wife/small biz owner thing. Essentially what we are saying is we don’t sleep. ;)
Heather: I sometimes struggle with consistency (with blogs as well as in life) I am more of a starter than a finisher.
Donnell: I don’t know about Heather, but I feel like things definitely ramped up pretty quickly and without warning! We went from “Hey, let’s create a blog to hold our class info and registration” to writing guest posts for blogs like Photofocus and Going Pro, and getting emails from people like Guy Kawasaki and The Creative Mama. ;) It’s been really amazing to be an active part of the photography community and we have only just begun!
Heather: The sense of community… and the fame. Definitely the fame. ;)
Donnell: Treat it like your baby… the younger the blog, the more attention and care it requires!
Heather: Have a plan… not a purpose necessarily, but at the very least a plan.
Donnell: It seems like I rarely have time for anything aside from work and family these days, but when I have a spare moment I’m always popping into Photofocus, The Strobist for lighting issues (and humor), Gray Photography (love their Tuesday Tips and Tricks), of course TCM, and my all-time totally photo-unrelated blog is Dooce. I’m sure there are 173 more I read on occasion, but those are in my regular rotation.
Heather: I wander here and there, follow some for while, move on, come back. I enjoy the humor of www.thebigmamablog.com, and the info from a new found fave www.framedshow.com, but other than that they are too random to attempt to list.
Donnell: We plan on continuing to do what we are doing, but we have a Photowalk in the works and we will possibly be partnering up with the local camera store for classes and such. We have some other ideas, but they are so baby fresh we can’t even share… but they are super exciting if everything pans out!!
Heather: I would just like to add here that I love that Donnell used the expression “baby fresh”.
Donnell: Wordpress… is there anything else worth using when photos are involved?! And we have built-in tech support with my hubs, Tim. Our blog would not function properly if I had not married him. Thanks, honey! ;)
Heather: I’m actually a WordPress convert. My business blog was previously a Blogger blog, but when we started The Photo Junkies I noticed how much better my images looked on WordPress. I made the leap. It was a bit painful, but I survived.
Donnell: I really, really enjoy ProPhoto Blogs. It is a template and takes all of the mystery out of the design side of blogging. It is easy to use, but certainly not the cheapest template around (for good reason). We also use Disqus and love us some social media buttons!
Heather: Again, ProPhoto Blogs is another blog tool that Donnell turned me on to. Oh, thanks, by the way!
Donnell: We do classes, but those are definitely geared towards local photogs at the moment as we are super hands on with our students. We are always looking for sponsors to help with giveaways and such. We typically re-invest everything we make from sponsors and classes into the blog, so we are essentially a non-profit (although we wouldn’t be totally depressed if that changed some day). ;) What can we say? We really enjoy giving things away!!
Heather: We definitely like to share product discoveries as well as promote others photo/support type services. But mostly it is a resource for learning or sharing the things we are “currently” passionate about. Oh yeah and we teach classes.
Kelly Manno – St. Louis Shot Party 2011
Monitor Calibration Resources
Twitter: twitter.com/thephotojunkies
Facebook: facebook.com/thephotojunkies
Pingback: A Homeschool Holiday | Pioneer Woman Homeschooling | Ree Drummond | Home Schooling