Not all that long ago, photography required a fair amount of study and skill to master technically. Both professionals and amateurs possessed a knowledge of film, the darkroom, chemistry, development, optics, cameras, light and exposure just to name a few.

The advent of digital capture and cameras that do everything but brew a cup of coffee, this knowledge is no longer required to make a photograph. These days, all you really need is a cell phone.

So the question is, has the ease and immediacy of digital ruined the art of photography?

Everyone probably has their own top reasons for blogging, here are mine.

1. Success

I think everyone has that thought in the back of their mind. The dream that I COULD be big. It just takes good content, and some clever marketing and you could possibly pull in a lot of readers, viewers and eventually money. If I am going to do anything, I want to do it right, and I want to be as good as I can.

2. Passion

I love to write, that’s what I’ve always done, write. Whether to release from a stressfull situation or get away and lose myself in my words. I’ve always found a good way to put things into words, at least I think so. I started with essays and stories, then poetry, and now blogging.

3. Time

I began to blog, because I had time. Time to kill, time to do something with. Since I wasn’t working I was hoping to make money online somehow, and had the time to do it. It gets hard when you CAN’T find the time to blog.

4. Community

I love being apart of things that are bigger than myself. Blog about your Blog has become a great community, it’s not about me. It wouldn’t be the blogging community it is without the rest of our bloggers contributing. Even if you have a personal blog, it can become bigger than you. Your influencing people with your writing, thats why they link to you. The things you write no longer are just your thoughts and words, they become everyones.

5. Fun

I have become obsessed with stats and growing this blog. It’s fun to check my email to see what is going on. I read google reader daily, and participate on other blogs. Writing, communicating, growing, it’s all fun to me. If it wasn’t then I probably wouldn’t be blogging.

What are you top 5 reasons for blogging? Feel free to “tag” other bloggers.

Blogging has been made a rather ease by the wifi internet access that enables a fast and reliable online access virtually anywhere. Mobile bloggers can choose any wireless internet service that fits well with their requirements, for example, at&t wireless that provides services on both mobile and landline equipment. The supreme quality in the service has been made possible through wireless internet booster installations. A well-trusted name in the world of wireless communications is cingular wireless.

I mentioned yesterday we are giving the fridge away when we reach 150 rss subscribers. I have made a list of 33 entries so far. Make sure you are on that list if you want to win the fridge. Remember, I am currently not sending this prize out of the US, it wouldn’t be worth the shipping costs.

If you want your entry to show up as a link to your website, just leave a comment there and I will fix it. Our old blogspot domain is still a page rank 4, however it is a list, so I wanted to give the option.

Brian Auer over at Epic Edits Weblog has come up with a neat little project for us photo-bloggers to get the word out about our sites…

“I propose we do a little blog project that will allow everyone to share their sites with the other readers. Nothing major “ I just want to get a roundup of all your sites and post them here with a link and a description for all the other readers to see. Plus I’d like to add your sites to my arsenal of feeds that I digest every day.”

Brian emailed everyone the list in html in the hopes that everyone would publish it as well. This WAS NOT a requirement to be listed.

At the deadline, 59 people had submitted sites, and it looks like most of them republished the list as well.

If your into photography, have a look at the list here.

If you happen to have a photo blog, go persuade Brian to do it again…

There’s a major global event taking place on 20th May, when many thousands of people will gather at twelve locations around the globe to meditate and pray for global peace and harmony with nature. What makes this particularly exciting is that the results are to be measured by the Global Consciousness Project at Princeton University, which uses computers to measure the effects of human consciousness. The idea is to prove whether such events can have a real, measurable, beneficial effect or are simply pie in the sky. To find out more about this event, including details of where the gatherings are taking place, see the latest post at The Secret Of Life.

Recently I blogged about How We Got 300 MyBlogLog Members. Today we reached our 400th member! I am very surprised to see we got another 100 members in less than a month, with little promotion of it. I appreciate all of our members, and I will be running a contest after we giveaway our mini fridge.

Speaking of our mini-fridge giveaway, we will now give it away when we reach 150 rss feed subscribers, we currently have 118. After that we will be promoting our MyBlogLog Community and give away more prizes, with even more chances to win

Looking for a few tips to get 400 MyBlogLog members? Here is a few excerpts from our most recent MyBlogLog post.

Post about MyBlogLog! Let your readers know you are interested in getting members.

Promote! Just a MyBlogLog widget isn’t enough anymore. Everyone has them! Be unique.

Be Active! Essentially, you get what you put in. The more active you are the more members and traffic you can recieve from MyBlogLog.

Offer Incentives! Contests can definitely increase your member total. Ask for more members and have a drawing for a prize.

Read the original tips in length at How We Got 300 MyBlogLog Members

I had a revelation today about blogging when I picked up a copy of National Geographic, a good old-fashioned real life magazine. I wish I had made the connection between online and offline publishing when I first started to blog

I have never written a magazine or published anything in print, so the whole concept of publishing on-line (blogging) was a bit of a mystery. And to be honest, when I started to read up on blogging, it was like a trip back to schooldays, studying a topic you don’t quite have an affinity for. All the thousands of words and articles I read about how to set up a blog, how to market it, how often to publish etc etc, it was a bit like gobbledeygook that I sort of understood, but didn’t.

But picking up the National Geographic magazine today, I had one of those moments where lots of things became clear. Suddenly I could literally see how easy it should be to decide on the content and direction of a blog.

A good title

What can be more telling about what is inside than what is on the outside? On the cover, the name National Geographic speaks volumes. A blog title and ideally a blog’s URL should speak volumes too

A homepage that reinforces the title

Just reading the titles of 4 articles advertised on the cover of National Geographic, it was obvious that the writers are focussed on environmental topics and situations going on in exotic places around the globe. A blog homepage should quickly convey a clear message of material related to the blog title.

Choose a field that excites you

When you read an article in National Geographic, you can tell the authors are passionate about what they write. Bloggers need to convey the same excitement. Also, there should be no shortage of ideas for further material. It is hard to imagine National Geographic not being published because “our writers have run out of ideas!”

Be an expert in your field

The material in National Geographic is researched. Sometimes it is too indepth for casual readers, but there is always a variety of articles for all levels of expertise, attention span and interest in minutiae.Just because your topic is complicated, no reason not to make it easy to read or follow.

Clean theme

The material in National Geographic is presented in a clear format that young and old eyes alike can appreciate. There is white space, little fuss, the font is readable black on white, there are headings, blockquotes, beautiful images with tags, titles… This all applies in a blog too.

Publish regularly

National Geographic publish articles on a regular basis. Once a month isn’t once a day, but you know that every 15th of the month, or whatever deal you have, that magazine is going to arrive at your house.

What more do potential bloggers need to know about the theory behind blogging?