Photos Presentation on Blogs

It was apparent right from my early days of blogging that one of the goals I had in mind was finding a way to share some of the pictures I take.  Pictures add a personal element to blogs on several levels.  Something interested me enough to take one or more pictures of it, showing my readers what I'm interested in without having to write it all out.  With respect to pictures, they can add a considerable amount of content so it is important how you present them. 

A couple of weeks ago I was doing a bit of blog hopping when I came across a cooking blog that I stopped to check out in further detail.  First off the colour scheme of yellow, black and white reminded me of the New York yellow cabs.  I'm not sure if that is good thing.  What really got my attention was how the pictures were presented, and not in a good way.  Each picture was staggered left, right, left something I do myself when using more than one picture on a post.   This is a scrapbooking technique to give movement to the page or in this case the post.  What the blogger had done in addition to staggering was turn each picture on a 45º angle with the first oriented left and angled left then the next oriented right and angled right and so on for about ten pictures.  Well that certain did give movement as in my head constantly tilting back and forth to get a good look at the picture to the point of getting a bit of motion sickness.  It didn't help that each picture had a drop shadow and was painfully slow loading.  I doubt this result is what the blogger intended!

The debate is out as to whether or not to add some type of edging (eg. bevel) or a frame.  I personally use a bevel edge on pictures on my cooking blog but frames on my other blogs.  The reason being this adds a finished look to the picture.  However, I have also use pictures without an edge or frame.  This really is a matter of personal preference.  I think the biggest issue is, if you use a finished edge don't allow it to over power the pictures.

I seldom use more than four photos on a blog post because aside of my Wordless Wednesday posts on my personal blog, there is always a fair amount of journaling on each post.  I have used a mosaic method with and without frames for incorporating more than one photo into a final image.  Two to four pictures presented mosaic style works nicely for some of my cooking posts but more can be used if desired.  I created one framed mosaic using nine photos and another with eight photos to demonstrate how easy it was to set up mosaics for digital scrapbooking on my homemaking blog.  I used the same technique to display several of my spring flowers on my gardening blog.  It can be a nice way to get more content in one image rather than using several single photos.  Mosaics do make for a lovely photo presentation simply because they are a bit different!

Garden Gnome
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