Yesterday I was watching a rerun of a session that New Zealand photographer Sue Bryce did a couple of months ago as part of a workshop on www.creativelive.com. In the particular section she was talking about marketing your business and particularly how to promote through social media, websites and blogs.

She was a firm advocate of the benefits of blogging, but she did state that you needed a clear idea of what the purpose of the blog was. She also stated that she thought that most photographers blogs were actually aimed at other photographers, rather than clients, and that they were simply an exercise in self gratulation. Sues own blog can be found at http://www.inbedwithsue.com/blog/.

This really got me thinking about this blog and where it had developed without really a clear goal. It started as an extension to the posts I was making on my Facebook page as I wanted to provide context around the images I was taking. It has now moved to include the various articles and random thoughts that I have from time to time. Most of these are aimed at other photographers.

I had also wanted to create a website and using a blogging engine was the simplest way to achieve that.

Now as photography is my passion, rather than something I am trying to make money out of, this blog does not focus entirely on getting work. However this is not to say that I do hope that by showing examples of my work through it, that work will not come my way.

In fact I am a firm believer in karma and that by helping others through this blog that the good will be returned to me in some form. I have certainly found that connections I have made with people have resulted in good things happening.

I would be interested in your own thoughts on this.

The image with this post was a competition entry for a contest run at Wellington Photographic Society where we were given a range of objects to incorporate in images.