The Evolution of a Blog

From Sue S.: Did you start a blog to have some place for your wonderful photos or did writing the blog motivate you to get out and take pictures and find stories? You do a lot of research so was the blog a natural outlet for all that information? This blog reader thanks you for that info as it has helped me many times. 

I started the blog on a whim after bringing Emma home to be a safe, easy companion for Tessa.  Just goes to show, you never can tell how things are gonna turn out:)

I had no real plan or goal in mind for the blog.  Mostly, it was a way to play around with a different, less formal, less boring writing style than the dry scientific stuff I had always had to adhere to.  It was an easy creative outlet that I had few expectations of. 

While I have always had a mild interest in photography, it wasn’t until a friend gave me a digital camera as a gift that I really paid much attention to it.  I really love the immediacy and guilt-free ease of digital photography.  Still, it was the blog that actually got me out taking pictures.  Up to that point, I kept the camera in its little padded case and only got it out for special occasions.  The few pictures I took with it were crap.  The blog motivated me to get out and really use the thing.   

I’ve learned a tremendous amount about photography by carrying the camera with me in my pocket all the time and taking several thousand pictures, most of which were also crap.  I think I have taken at least a hundred bad shots for every decent one, although I like to think that ratio is improving.  The blog and the photography have evolved together and seem inseparable in my mind.  It’s hard to say where one begins and the other ends and I am not sure one would survive without the other.

I never intended for the blog to be an outlet for any of the research that I do, but that too has evolved.  I am, by nature and training, a researcher, an observer and a scientist.  There is a lot of stuff crammed into my head that I think others might be interested in.  However, I also have a hard time knowing how much people really want to hear.  Being one of those socially inept geeks who can go on and on about the mineral content of hay and how it’s linked to soil quality and hoof health, I am all too familiar with the glassy-eyed, glazed stare of people who desperately wish they’d never asked.  I try to share some of the info that I think might be useful without boring everyone to tears.  I would be happy to share more of my observations if anyone is interested, but I am wary of that glazed stare:)