Blogs are a very popular way of life now, everybody seems to be into blogging these days, about anything out under the sun. Most common topics of course are about food and travel. Now everybody can become a food critique or a travel writer, even if they do not possess the expertise to do so. But then again, blogs are exactly that, and these are not like the formal articles that used to go through a gazillion reviews, editing and approvals to get published. Blogs simply contain the writer's opinions and thoughts.
I love to write. Even as a child, I would write poems and short stories. I would write letters and also keep a journal. Back then, it was referred to as a diary. So what should I blog about? I do not want to be another food or travel blogger in the vast sea of bloggers out there, although I do admit I keep a personal journal as well as a travel blog of all the places I have visited. I thought to blog about something that I love to do, so that I get inspired and can keep up with the regimen. I love to eat and I enjoy trying out different types of food, but I don't feel like I can contribute something to the public which isn't already known to many. Besides, it's a bad idea for keeping healthy and losing weight :-)
So what else? I thought about travel and photography, which are two of my strongest passion. Again, so many travel blogs out there, and so many photoblogs too. I'm sure I can think of something different, something that not a lot of people have done yet. Then one day, a movie called "Julie and Julia" inspired me to revisit blogging. The movie was about a young girl on a project to blog her experiences as she cooked every recipe from the famous Julia Child's recipe book, more than 500 of them in 365 days. What's interesting is that it writes about both the positive and negative experiences, including the struggles that she has undergone as she follows through a recipe book. I love the time she had to learn to kill a live lobster, something you won't see in a cookbook nor a food blog. So I thought, what a wonderful idea, it's not about any pretentious critiques and/or reviews that has unfortunately resulted from the frenzy of blogging and marketing people taking advantage of this channel; but it goes back to the original intent of a blog, which is to provide an outlet for the writer to journal the experiences as he/she goes through the journey of cooking all the recipes from a famous chef and learning from it.
I then built from this idea and decided that I can still blog about photography, and I don't need to be a professional expert, but rather I can be a student learning the ropes, which most of my readers will be. Most photography blogs present tips and techniques as well as present to you a sleuth of resources on how to take better photographs. Other photoblogs feature their best work. And most photography books teach you how to's and provide expert techniques on how to improve your photographs. But I often thought after going through these, "Ok, I know how to improve, but can you give me an example of a bad one so that I can learn from it?" Few of these teach you about the common mistakes and how to learn from these. Ideally, I would want to put two pictures side by side (a bad one and a good one) and and then explain the how to, the what to do, and most importantly, what not to do. I love the books where they show you how to improve your composition and present two photographs so that you see the difference.
I'm an amateur photographer and every time I take a shot, I make mistakes. I'm sure all photographers do, even the experienced ones. From these mistakes, I find the motivation to learn how to correct these and further improve my shots. There are just so many valuable lessons out there that is worth sharing with other photographers. Wouldn't that make life simpler and as a whole, allow us to take better shots faster?
I don't seek to become a professional photographer, but I seek to take great photographs even as a hobby photographer.
So, as I write about my experiences; hopefully, in the process, I can share my journey with other similar beginners and amateurs like me, or even benefit the experienced ones too.
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