How to submit a blog for the Club website (edited)

(Note this blog was edited to add to the advice on sizing of images 24Oct22)

The club encourages members to send “blogs” to be posted on the club website.

Why blog?

Other members might not know about your interests and this is a great way of sharing across the whole club.

Search engines favour websites that are active with new content when searches are performed. We want our website to appear high on searches if people are looking for a photography club or searching for interesting content.

As Facebook Pages are searchable by Google we will cross-post blogs to help improve our presence on Facebook too.

What do we mean by a “blog”?

This is a blog!

Seriously if you have been on a trip, a SIG outing, a photo workshop, have an interesting image to share, have gained a photographic distinction or have picked up advice that you would like to share – then we we like to hear from you!

What to send

To keep things simple please follow these guidelines:

1) Send your text as a Word document if possible, just write in your own style. If just an image then perhaps a sentence or two about the image plus the camera settings will be enough

2) Include at least one image. This will be the highlighted image that is displayed in the News feed or when the blog is reposted on our Facebook page

3) If you have multiple images please put their title in the text where you’d want them to be in in the blog, remember we can put multiple images in a gallery.

4) Please send JPGs as attachments to your email, for all you Apple Mac users please send the images in a Zip file or use WeTransfer

If a landscape image is wider than 650 pixels then reduce its width to 650 pixels. Images that are already smaller than 650 pixels wide will appear “small” in the blog.

Portrait or square images should be no taller than 450 pixels.

If you intend to resize using Lightroom then the best advice is to have two presets. One for landscape and another for square/portrait.

If you have it, I find using Photoshop to resize is quick and easy but remember to use the option “Save A Copy”.

Please use this format for the filename of the image:

(Authorsname)-(date)-(title)

This will hopefully prevent clashes and when your images are put on the website. Plus equally important the author’s name will be associated with the image. The title can then also be used as a caption on each of the images .

5) Please do include any weblinks (URLs) that may help the reader. For example links to the National Trust page for the location, the workshop leader’s website etc.

Please add a link to your website, Instagram, Facebook Page etc. If you blog too, please don’t use the same text as Google doesn’t reward plagiarism!

Where to send

Please send it to the club’s Chairman or the club’s secretary

What happens then

Please bear with us if we check for spellings etc and perhaps add blank lines and sub-titles to help readers

Once the blog is posted we will send you the link and ask for you to check and ok the draft version. Once you are happy then and only then will your name be on the blog rather than “The Editor”.

Please then cross-post on your social media or put links onto your website!

(Note this blog was edited to add to the advice on sizing of images 24Oct22)

(Note this blog was edited on 26.09.23)

The Editor