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Marc-a-Day

I’ve realized my life will not support a 365 photography project. The three times I’ve attempted it have resulted in failure after about 30 days or so. Maybe someday my life will normalize and become a little more structured but until that day comes I can POST a photo a day. Hence my new photoblog, Marc-a-Day.

This photoblog uses the DuoTone theme for Wordpress that is the evolution of the popular Monotone theme.  The background color dynamically changes for each post to present the best accent for the photo.  I’m pretty happy with this one, so far it’s been easy to customize and SEO friendly.

Stop by and let me know what you think.

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PhotoBlogging DC

pbdc2 While surfing the net for Wordpress photoblog themes to include in my presentation on photoblogging at WordCamp I came across Autofocus by Allan Cole.  This theme really stood out to me as the epitome of a photoblog with it’s minimalistic approach. The photo is really the subject of the post, no sidebars or widgets to draw your eye away from the image.  I started to think of a way to utilize this theme in a new project.  Yes thats a little backwards for most projects, normally the project is defined and then a theme identified.  This was a unique case though.

Last month I launched PhotoBlogging DC.  Just like the theme, my purpose was minimalistic:  Bring together and spotlight photos from some of the Washington DC and surrounding area’s talented photographers.

To begin I sent out invitations to contribute to about 15 of my photography friends.  Word spread and as of today we are up to 32 contributors.  Our photographers are of all experience levels, amateur to professional, but they all have one thing in common…they all have a love of photography.  So far I have not turned any prospective contributor away and all but one of the original 15 invites were accepted (you know who you are :P ).

I didn’t set any hard rules for photo submissions other than they needed to be taken within the DC and surrounding area.  I’ve defined that area as North to the border of Baltimore, West to the Shenandoah Mountains, South to Fredricksburg, and all points East.  This gives us a broad range of subjects from the monuments on the mall to horses in Loudon county.

Each day a new photo is posted so be sure and visit the site and subscribe to our RSS feed.  We also released new badges today so consider adding one to your site.  If you would like to become a PBDC contributor then contact me or leave a comment here with a link to a sample of your photos.

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Photoblogging Presentation at WordCamp Mid-Atlantic 2009

Photoblogging at WordCamp Mid-Atlantic 2009

photo courtesy of Shawn Duffy

A little over a month ago Aaron Brazell and I were talking about the presentations being planned for WordCamp Mid-Atlantic 2009.  It hit us that photoblogging had become a popular blogging technique that could make for an interesting session.  I quickly stepped up to volunteer to take this one on.

In preparation I conducted a survey of Wordpress photobloggers and asked questions like why they photoblog, what themes and plugins did they utilize, and what improvements they would like to see.  I’d like to thank everyone that participated in the survey and plan to have the results published this week.

The survey results were a great asset to building my presentation.  I was able to display a number of themes and plugins along with examples of what I believe the top 5 reasons to photoblog are.  If you are interested in seeing the slides from the session you can find them here.

I do plan on breaking the presentation down into a number of blog posts over the next few weeks.  This subject will then continue on as a regular feature here with Wordpress theme and plugin recommendations, how-to’s, and answering any questions you may have.

Finally let me thank the organizers of WordCamp Mid-Atlantic, Aaron Brazell and Jimmy Gardner.  They did a great job and the day was a complete success in both my eyes and every participant I spoke to.  For a recap of the day check out Jimmy’s post about it.

WordCamp Mid-Atlantic Photoblogging with Wordpress Slide Deck (PDF)

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