The January 2005 issue of Shutterbug magazine features an article entitled Blog, Blog, Blog, Blog, Photoblog : How Photographers Are Making The Internet Work For Them. The author, David B. Brooks, outlines the advantages of photographers who have photoblogs and mentions several communities as well as many popular photoblogs. Photoblogs.org was a favorite, of course, as he shares what many of us have known for some time.

Today, finding interesting and rewarding photoblogs has been made easy by some dedicated people who have created websites that track individual photoblogs and provide links to many which the managers of the sites have found interesting or exceptional. From a photo enthusiast’s perspective, the website that offers the richest harvest is www.photoblogs.org.

Images and a few words about why they do what they do are featured by several Photoblogs.org members, and a few others are mentioned by the author himself. In the article are:

Jinky Art
Catherine Jamieson
A Walk Through Durham Township, Pennsylvania
Always Curious
Pixelbrand
Heather Powazek Champ as well as The Mirror Project
Chromasia
Daily Dose of Imagery
The Narrative
Watch Me Turn 30
Sushicam

Kudos to all of the wonderful photoblogs featured and to Brandon for having such a talented group to pick from! It is exciting to see other photographers in the 'real world' recognizing the efforts of the members here. Does this mean we are going legit?

I'm not trying to embarass David here, but I just wanted to pass along the exciting news that Chromasia (profile) has just received its 1,000th favorite on the site!

David's always been an inspiration, and a huge force into why many of us started photoblogging, or continue to do so. If anyone deserves this, it's him. So congrats buddy... it's quite an accomplishment, and we're all proud. I'll go and buy you a cake soon

Chicago Photobloggers is now LIVE! Come check us out!

A special thanks to Brandon for the opportunity to be part of Photoblogs.org, and saving a space for us at the table. A big thanks to Rannie for coordinating everything - and providing the inspiration.

If not for Rod at Photovox, we never would have launched. Rod did all the heavy lifting with design -- I'm eternally grateful for his help and support. Rod did an outstanding job -- our site has a wondeful Chicago-like feel to it. Maybe Rod can do something about designing a winning Chicago sports team??

I'd like to invite everyone to drop us a line at chicagophotobloggers@gmail.com with any suggestions -- or if you're from Chicagoland and would like to be linked, just let us know!

Stop by and visit. We're glad to have you!

Thanks everyone.

bob

Photoblogs.org has had some recent spikes in traffic, which have caused some slow-downs here and there.  I've been streamlining the site, so that this will (hopefully) no longer be a problem.  During this process you may see some strange things or silly error messages.  That's just me tweaking things.

Bear with me.  It looks like growing pains are now upon us.

So, we got slashdotted today.

I've made the Photoblogs.org homepage static so that the database won't crash. The only drawback is that the page won't change. Oh well.

Once the traffic dies down, I'll put things back to normal.

Due to the great response to yesterday's post about camera makes and models, I've created a new wiki site called Camerapedia.org!

This will be a great place to collect links and information about all different kinds of cameras. Since anyone can add and update information on the site, we can shape this into whatever we want it to be.

I will also use the data on Camerapedia.org to help create new Photoblogs.org features, so I'm very excited about the possibilities here.

Right now we need to migrate the information from the current List of Camera Makes and Models to the new Camerapedia.org site. If any of you would like to help with this, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Brandon

Someone asked me why we didn't syndicate the entire blog post in our RSS feed. Couldn't really think of a good reason why not, so I flipped the switch to make the full entry available. (Hopefully, it worked.)

Let me know if you have any preferences either way.

I just received the following via email. Even though it's not in perfect English, I think it perfectly points out an existing problem...

...visiting other photologs' sites (from other members) I find the "VOTE" item. ¿What's that? I didn't find any mention on your FAQ section or site. So, that's why I usually press these button and finally I see what was doin': add the site into my Favorites list (without my permision)! Vote or Favorites? Is photoblogs.org a competition site? I don't think so. "My favorites" should be my own list of photo-sites, usefull for these members who knows my style and wish to look more, not a way for other to appear up to Top Lists.

Are you agree with these "VOTE" item? You will not do nothing?

Several photoblogs have a specially formatted link to Photoblogs.org that, when followed, will automatically add their site to the visitor's favorites list. This wasn't an intended feature of Photoblogs.org. A few smart people basically figured out how to "hack" the URL interface. I noticed this a while ago in a couple of places and just let it slide, but now it's kind of caught on like a virus. And it's obviously causing some people (like the person quoted above) to unknowingly add sites to their favorites lists.

This is just a warning that I'll be removing this "feature". These types of links will eventually result in an error message.

I've been tweaking around with the wiki a bit. Hopefully, I've made things a little more clear and useful.

You may have noticed that I've also altered the primary navigation on all the Photoblogs.org Sites, so that they all link to each other. That way it should be easy to bounce to and fro.

So, I rearraged the blog a bit. The big thing is that I wanted more room for the body text.

What do you think?