Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Show and Tell-A Few Things I've Learned....

I think there comes a point in a blogger's bloggin' that you need to share what you've learned.  No, you may not be an expert but what you've realized may help another.  And that's what I want to do today!  Just a few tips, you may take them or leave them, you may have heard them before...if so great! Perhaps you needed to be reminded?  I'd love some feedback!

#1
A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words
I like photos in a post.  For me, it helps me get the point.  And the bigger the better. And if I'm using photos I did not take I try and make them as big as I can, sometimes there is some blurriness so I may make it medium or large.(The above photo was taken with my cell phone, I had to leave it original size, larger just didn't look good!)  Photos break up the 'black and white' and keep a reader interested.  Photos that I take, I try and be mindful of what's going on in the background and to the sides....I want you to see what I'm doing not the mess I made to do it! ☺ I'm still working on lighting, so please forgive if some of them have been a little dark....I usually do projects after Lil' Hunkie has gone to bed.  He just turned 20 months a few days ago and boy he's in to everything!  I do edit all of my photos in Photoscape and add "Vintage Gwen" usually, especially to tutorials or projects.  I simply add a text box, haven't explored a watermark yet, I like the text box just fine. And one last thing about photos...after Photoscaping I then go to "My Pictures" on my desktop and edit one more time.  Yes I know what you're thinking!  But it was taking FOREVER for my photos to load into a post.  Now this could be my lack of knowledge of my camera and I may need to adjust my camera so the size of my photos are smaller! But until I tackle that this is what I do:
Right click on a photo
Click on edit
Click on resize
  Click on predefined width x heigth
Click on arrow down
Click on web-large (640x480 px)
Click on ok
Save!
And let me tell you! SO much better!  I'm sure you knew this already! Glad I know now!
These are my thoughts on photos! ☺☺

#2
Email, email, email!
If you're like me, you got emails coming out the wazoo! I have 3 email accounts! Thankfully I can somewhat manage them from my cell phone.  Which is helpful, cause I try my best to respond to every comment, even if it's a "Thanks so much!" and right now I'm pretty good at responding except when I come across the infamous "no reply blogger".  And I'm a little surprised at some 'bigger' blogs that have this going on still!  I've seen many, many other bloggers mention this and give the quick fix and I wanted to follow suit.  We all know that comments fuel us and being able to acknowledge that fuel keeps all the love and inspiration going!
After signing in and you're brought to your Dashboard, go to the links by your photo...click on Edit Profile...

Next check mark the box beside Show my email address and save!  That's it!  I had to be enlightened to this and I enjoy getting responses from my comments! (Note: if you don't respond to my comment then I'm pretty sure your busy with bloggin', mommy stuff, wife stuff, etc,etc and I understand!)



And #3
Giving Credit
This is something fairly new that I've decided to change my ways on.  I recently read the opinion of  a much, much, much bigger blog than mine about giving credit and must say I agree with her....
Not going to quote her because I don't remember word for word but basically in her opinion putting 'photos courtesy of....' and 'via' in small letters is barely giving credit.  And I am guilty of this! Egads!  Now I do try and put as many links as I can to a post/blog/website but when it comes time to credit photos I have done this.  And so I thought to myself, 'why do I do this?'...it's what I've seen some others do and thought that's what you do!  I'm sorry, I should have done more research! Thank goodness for a new light bulb turned on!  So from now on, no more small photo credits!  They deserve to be regular size!
These are just a few things I've learned so far in blogging. What have you learned? 
I'd love to hear....maybe you got something I need to know!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Great tips and you have a lovely blog. Thank you so much for checking out my blog :)
♥Amy