ANDRE BEGIN

When I first started blogging in 2013, would you believe that the idea of a featured picture to accompany an article was just a suggestion?

At least that’s the way I remember it.

According to blogging experts (then and now), a well-chosen photo was said to help increase traffic to the posted article by creating visual interest.

Back then, for a novice blogger whose primary interest was writing, that extra time-consuming detail stressed me out at first.

After a couple of experiments in which I included a photo with a blog post and noticed the number of page hits increase, I was warming up to the idea.

Because I have dabbled in photography ever since Santa gave me my first “110” camera for Christmas at age 9, the extra work required in producing a photo for EACH and EVERY blog post didn’t really scare me off.

By that point, my hard drive already contained thousands of images that I captured over the years. Surely, I could find some there to launch my own stock photo portfolio. And if I didn’t have the right ones, it wasn’t a stretch for me to think I could go out and create new ones, as needed.

Truly, digital photography has been a game changer. Taking a photo with a digital camera or a mobile device has become a much more affordable venture.

It’s not like back in the days of bringing a roll of film to a store and paying $10 to $20 to process 24 photos (on top of the cost of film and flashcubes).

Today, you can snap hundreds of photos, select the best of the best, and keep them for years.

That being the case, it felt very natural for me to take a stroll down memory lane and review my archived photos, picking out the ones with potential (or that already matched up with a story) and to copy them into a separate folder.

For posts about travel, I sifted through vacation photos for images of interesting and recognizable landmarks (without tourists in the background).

For the cat themed posts, I selected the best from the hundreds of photos accumulated of Ivy the Wonder Cat. She seems OK with it.

For posts about the writing process, I started taking pictures of the tools of the trade like my writing desk and my computer keyboard.

Funny enough, during my travels, whenever I saw a typewriter, I was drawn to it (Gee… I wonder why) and took a picture, without really having a purpose in mind. Of course, those shots made the cut too.

What really appealed to my intuition as a photographer and convinced me about being on the lookout for stock photo opportunities was a serendipitous moment involving a snail.

One lunch time, I was out for a walk when I noticed a snail working its way across a sidewalk. This was a first for me as I had never seen one THIS up close before.

I stopped and took a few pictures of it, without really thinking about it.

It was only a few weeks later when I wrote an article called “Running: The Slow Road to Recovery” about my recovery from an injury that the perfect featured photo was so obvious to me: the snail picture!

This experience reinforced the idea of taking pictures without thinking about the blog specifically, just raising my awareness to note interesting photo opportunities and building up a reserve of assorted photos.

In doing so, without really realizing it, this became an extension of the creative process in itself and a reconnection with my love of photography.

Plus with the improvements in the quality of the photos our mobile devices can produce, there are really no excuses for not stopping and capturing a “moment”.

The trick is to stay ahead of the blog posts and snapping pictures as I see them, rather than writing a post and then waiting days, weeks or months for the right picture to come along.

Collecting random shots of random things has become a fun hobby in itself, to the point that when I start taking pictures that may seem weird or of what might appear as a less-than-memorable subject, my partner asks, “Stock photography?” to which I reply, “You know it!”

What is interesting is that now it’s a bit of a game for me, the quest for the perfect picture for each article. While I may already have a featured photo for an article, I have no problem with switching it out for a better one when the opportunity presents itself.

That being the case, it’s a little like “trading cards”, always on the hunt to build up my collection to have on hand the right picture for the right article.

By drawing from my own archives, I get to dabble in my photography hobby again, to think creatively beyond words, and frankly, it keeps things simpler than having to worry about licensing rights when using a service.

My stock photos might not be of a super professional grade, but I get to post exactly what I want and how I want, whether a very literal depiction of the blog’s story or a more abstract one. That only adds to the creative process and my self-validation as an artist.

Plus I get to refresh and stretch my skills not only as a photographer but as a photo editor at the same time with the various tools we can leverage to transform a good photo into a great photo.

I definitely see featured photos as a natural extension of the blogging process and of my writer’s voice.

And now, many years later, I couldn’t imagine a blog post without an accompanying picture.

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Sincere thanks for reading!
Have a great day,
André