How to Make a Photo Blog

As a photographer, you no doubt know that there are endless advantages to curating your own photo blog. New clients are more likely to find you through SEO (if you know the right tricks to follow! Old clients are more likely to share a link to your website if you’ve shared their work in a beautiful blog post. It’s a win-win!

That doesn’t mean it’s easy though. You’re not alone if you’ve let the thought of learning to photo blog stop you. Sometimes, the reason you haven’t Created a Photo Blog is as simple as being frustrated by the poor quality of images when you upload them to your blogging platform. Perhaps, you’ve seen beautiful photo blog layouts, but aren’t sure how to make a photo collage of your own. 

No matter what it is that’s stopping you, we’re here today to show you How to Make a Photo Blog (and how to do it with ease!). 

HOW TO MAKE A PHOTO BLOG

Know Your Niche

In one of our recent posts, about SEO Photo Blogging, we talked about the importance of Knowing Your Target Audience. There are so many reasons why knowing who your ideal client is, and therefore your niche, matters. Not least of all being that any blog you create should be designed with that client in mind. 

Before you start your photo blog, ask yourself what you want it to achieve? Are you a wedding photographer looking to connect with your ideal client? Are you a lifestyle photographer, looking to photograph like-minded souls as you travel the world? Are you a photojournalist aiming to build a powerful visual portfolio of your work?

Whatever it is, knowing your niche and your target audience is the first step in How to Make a Photo Blog. This will determine the tone as well as the content of what you share. 

How to Create a Photo Blog: Choosing your photos

Once you’ve settled on your niche and your audience, it’s time to start preparing a post for your photo blog. As a photographer, you no doubt care about your work. You put time into taking each image, before editing your shots to perfection. This can make it hard to cull photos to blog, but it’s important that you narrow down your selection. You don’t want to overload your site or your audience with too much content. 

How Many Photos Should a Photo Blog Have

There isn’t an exact science to how many photos a photo blog should have. It really depends on the work that you’re sharing and the speed of your website. SEO experts like Neil Patel suggest 1 photo per 150 words. This is probably more appropriate for blogs where the text content is the most important thing though. You’re here to know about photo blogging! So, we’d suggest:

• Photo Blogs for Wedding Photography: 50 photos
• Photo Blogs for Portrait Photography: 20 photos 
• Photo Blogs for Travel Photography: 10-20 photos
• Photos Blogs for Photojournalism: the most important shots that tell that story (minimum 10)

There isn’t a hard and fast rule, though. Use as many photos as you need to tell a story, but not so much that your readers will lose interest. Or worse, not so many that it will affect your site’s loading speeds.

Best Practices for Creating a Photo Blog

• Optimize Your Photos
• Use Alt Text
• Use Images to Break Up Text
• Use Photo Collages within your Photo Blog

Optimize Your Images

Okay, so you’ve narrowed your photos from a single shoot down to the ones you want to share on your blog post – the ones that tell a story and represent the very best of your work. If you’re a professional photographer, your files are no doubt high-resolution. This is important when it comes to printing, but not for photo blogging! Most people will view your blog on their phone or on a small laptop screen, so web resolution is fine. 

To determine the best image size for your photo blog, check the documentation that came with your site’s theme. Alternatively, you could use Picnook’s MyBlog tool , which will automatically resize and optimize your image size for you, no matter which blogging platform or theme you use.

Use Alt Text

We’ve talked about alt text before, and we’ll no doubt talk about it again! This is the best way to make the most of SEO within your photo blog. Simply describe the contents of your photo in 1-2 short sentences. This will not only ensure your site is accessible, it will also let Google know to who to show your photos. 

Use Images to Break Up Text

It’s important that your blog has some written content in it, but let’s be honest, it’s not always fun to scroll through endless text. Use an image before each header, or in-between each block of 150 words. This will keep your audience engaged while highlighting the very best of the photos you’ve chosen to share. 

Use Photo Collages Within Your Blog

Standard photo blogs often place one photo after another. This is okay, but if that’s all you do, you’re missing out on an opportunity to tell the story of your photos in an impactful way. Some photos just make more sense together! Whether as a diptych or as a collage that makes the most of negative space. 

There are plenty of tutorials out there on how to create photo collages on Photoshop or InDesign, but that can be quite fiddly. Alternatively, you can drag & drop your photos into Picnook MyBlog and use the recycle button to view different layouts. Copy and paste the HTML code over to your site, and it’s ready to go! It really is that easy (plus you won’t have to worry about resizing your images!).

We know – we’ve really talked up Picnook MyBlog today as the best tool for How to Make a Photo Blog. It’s because we believe in it though! Picnook is run by photographers who knew that there had to be a better way to Create Photo Blogs. In fact, we’re so sure about it, we’re offering your first 5 blog posts for free. Are you ready to try it out?

Have you got questions about How to Make a Photo Collage? Or How to Create a Photo Blog in general? Let us know using Chat. We’d love to hear from you and help you learn more about photo blogging.