And I think users are still awe-struck by the news, which was kept pretty quiet until today’s announcement. But the question on their minds, is this: Should I like this change? Or should I run for my life?

As of writing this post, Zuckerberg’s status has been liked by 86,391 people, and it’s only been about an hour. Of course, there’s no dislike button on Facebook, which might tell another tale if it were available. But that made people liking a status so quickly means that the company does have some support – and I’m an optimist. Personally, there are several things about Facebook and their policies that I do not like, but I think this acquisition is going to be awesome for both companies.

Instagram and the Little Engine that Could

You all know the story about the little engine that could, right? Basically, it’s the kid’s tale of a engine who is faced with going up a huge mountain carrying a heavy load. He repeats, “I think I can, I think I can” over and over to stay motivated and make it to the peak, even when others find it an impossibly daunting task for such a small train. Instagram has been that little engine.

The company has…or, well, had…only 13 employees, and less funding from investors than you’d think, given their popularity. I’m assuming that one of the reasons it did take so long for them to come to Android was lack of resources. There’s such cool potential with Instagram, but being a small start-up isn’t easy.

Now, they’ve got no excuse. If I was CEO Kevin Systrom, I would be tempted to fill my office with money and roll around in it. More money allows you to give customers a better user experience, expand the project to be available to more people, get creative with your offerings, and more. Having an investor like Facebook makes it possible for Instagram to get even better – and that’s a good thing for users.

The Dark Shadow Cast by Facebook

Of course, the downside is that the person paying the bills pretty much gets to call the shots. Facebook has already said that they plan to keep the company as it’s own brand, rather than absorbing it into Facebook. I imagine that it will be similar to Google and YouTube – the companies will heavily work together, but Instagram isn’t going to just disappear before our eyes.

At least, that’s my hope. Again, I’m an optimist.

But I think Facebook is maturing as a company, and they realize that changing Instagram to be something exclusively for Facebook users is not a good direction for the company. In his announcement, Zuckerberg wrote:

We think the fact that Instagram is connected to other services beyond Facebook is an important part of the experience. We plan on keeping features like the ability to post to other social networks, the ability to not share your Instagrams on Facebook if you want, and the ability to have followers and follow people separately from your friends on Facebook.

In other words, Facebook has a cool new kickball, but they are going to share it on the playground with all the other kids so everyone can play kickball together. They just get to be pitcher.

Still, I think it’s something we need to keep an eye on as users. My hope is that Facebook will use this acquisition to make their own photo-sharing offerings stronger for Facebook users, but without mucking it up for current Instagram users who don’t want to be forced to use Facebook or change the way they use Instagram drastically. That might not be what happens in reality.

I do think, though, that we need to give Facebook and Instagram a chance.

And a final thought: What say you, Google+? For a network that has been competing with Facebook, this is a pretty big blow. I bet smaller networks like Pinterest and even Twitter have just gotten juicier-looking to Google!

Your turn to weigh in! What do you think of the Facebook-Instagram deal?

I personally never watermarked pictures in the past because…well…it always seemed like such a hassle. Then, I found this video on how to set up a action in Photoshop to add a watermark quickly and to batches of photos, rather than going through the steps of doing each one individually. Genius! Hope it helps you guys too:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Of course, it should go without saying, but don’t watermark images you don’t own. Also, if you want the picture without the watermark as well, make sure you also save a copy in another folder – once that image is on there, it can be difficult to remove.

Thanks to Bethany Gilbert from Capturing Your Market for posting this video on YouTube and making my life so much easier in less than four minutes.

Here are 5 fun apps for digital photo effects and my thoughts on each. For each app I used the same picture of a single rose stalk in my backyard that blooms four roses at a time!

Instagram:
I love the retro feel of the photo effects in this app! You can choose to take a new picture or use existing ones from your camera. Once you’re done zooming and cropping you can add one of a dozen effects and then share via Twitter, Facebook, Flickr or email. This picture uses the Hefe setting.

Color Effects:
Turn your photo to black and white, and then color select portions of the picture for accent. You can also change the color to a different one altogether. Note: After testing this out, I suggest zooming in several times to get into tight spaces for coloring!

Fotolr PS:
This app is like having a digital scrapbook tool in your pocket! You can edit portraits by adding/editing eyebrows, changing the hairstyle or color, removing acne, adding makeup and more. After you’re done you can add a frame or text and then place your photo into one of several scenes or backgrounds. That’s what I did here:

Comic Touch Light:
Along with a couple of effects, the best part of this app is the ability to add comic/thought/speech bubbles to your photos! The full version offers even more capability.

Old Photo Pro:
Select a picture and this app immediately converts it to look like an old photo. You can then tweak the brightness, contrast, and/or change the paper edges until it looks like it’s ready to slip into a frayed album.

What are your favorite photo effects apps?

Adding pictures is a lot more palatable, however, if you’re doing so in a way that boosts your brand. If you’re writing a group blog (like here at BlogWorld) or something that is heavy on information, but low on entertainment, stock photography might be all you need to keep your readers interested – but don’t discount how easy it is to take the photography a step farther. I’m not talking about starting a photography blog or even using an image-heavy design or becoming a strong Flickr user. I’m just talking about making smart decisions about your blog and the pictures you use.  If you’re willing to put in a little extra time, it can have a huge impact on your traffic. Let’s look at three different examples, mini case studies if you will, at how bloggers are using images to successfully build a brand.

Images on After Graduation

This is one of the recent pictures I used on After Graduation. It shows my personality and (I hope) makes you want to read the post to see why I’m making a goofy face.

I swear I’m not a total narcissist; I just wanted to start this discussion by looking at my own blog, After Graduation. When I started writing there, things were much different, and it looks more like what BlogWorld looks like. I made an effort to use a picture in most of my posts in order to break up the text (and fit my WordPress theme at the time), but most of what I used came from sxc.hu or another stock photography site.

Things took a bit of a turn when I realized that I wanted to get a lot more personable with my blog. I didn’t want to build something where people just came for advice. I wanted to build something that people actually stuck around and read through old posts and such because I was entertaining. To help readers connect more with me, I started adding pictures from my own life.

I certainly got a reaction. In just a few days, I jumped from a mere 3 RSS subscribers who had been hanging on for four or five months to 20. That might not seem like a lot to you, but for a small blog just starting out, it was huge to see that kind of increase in a weekend. And really, I didn’t do much different – I just used pictures of myself in the two posts I published. People, for some reason, responded.

Today, I use a mix of stock photography and personal photography. I don’t have a picture to illustrate every thought, so stock does work well sometimes, but when I post a picture of myself, there’s a real connection. We’re all voyeurs at hear – we want to look into the lives of others as we’re reading. Since then, I’ve definitely seen a greater response in terms of subscribers (both RSS and newsletter), time spent on the site, bounce rate, etc.

Images on Fluent in 3 Months

I’m not the only person who makes and effort to use a lot of pictures of myself. Someone else that comes immediately to mind is Benny of Fluent in 3 Months. He’s someone with a big personality, so I’m guessing that posting pictures came pretty naturally. I’ve told you what I see as a blogger who post a lot of pictures on her own site – and that’s only confirmed as a reader.

When I read Benny’s blog, I feel like I’m getting to know him personally, like he’s standing in front of me and we’re having a conversation. Yes, that comes from his writing style, but it also comes from the images he posts of himself. You get a little slice of him every time you log online and visit his site, like you’re part of his life.

That makes me trust him more. People talk a lot about being honest with your readers, and I think photography falls right in line with that. It shows me that you are who you say you are. It’s always quite jarring to meet someone in real life who looks nothing like their pictures or worse – to meet someone in real life who never posted pictures, so you’ve created an image of them in your mind that is completely wrong.

Images on Prolific Living

Posting pictures of yourself isn’t your own image option to build your brand as a blogger. Someone who doesn’t post pictures of herself often, but still does an amazing job with blog images is Farnoosh of Prolific Living. If you check out her site, you’ll notice that the photography she uses is gorgeous. She takes the pictures and does the editing herself.

It fits her brand. Prolific Living is a personal development blog, and Farnoosh is one of the most upbeat, friendly bloggers out there. The images she uses really help her readers connect with what she’s all about. It really elevates her blog above others that just use the same stock photography over and over again. Love it.

I want to challenge you to take a look at the images you use on your own blog. Does stock photography work for your blog? Or, with a little more effort, would there be a better option to promote your brand?

Nowadays, almost anyone can be a photographer. With falling prices for DSLR’s and other cameras, everybody and their uncle bob can take impressive photos. Not only that, but there is a plethora of sites for photography such as photo blogs, Flickr, and Facebook. To say the least, it is very difficult to set yourself apart from other photographers let alone build a strong online following.

I faced this problem when I started shooting photography. I wanted to share my photographs with the world, so I created a website and hosted my photos—expecting everybody to come to me. As Ray Liotta famously said in the film Field of Dreams, “If you build it, they will come.” However, in the digital age, this is no longer the case. I grew more and more disappointed as time passed and I didn’t get nearly as many pageviews and comments on my site as I dreamed. It took a lot of asking around, personal experience, and trial and error before I figured out my fatal flaws in my attempts to build an online community for photography.

In this post, I will share with you my personal successful methods to build a strong online following through social media.

	Create friends: Social networks online work very similarly to those offline. If you want consistent views/comments on your photography, you need to have friends and a network. You cannot expect other people to give you feedback if you don’t give feedback to others. And in order to have friends online, it takes hard work and time. Comment on the works of others, and also communicate with them through Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and blogs.   Think about it, who are the best friends—the ones that always talk about themselves or those who want to hear your input and suggestions as well? Relationships are always a two-way street.
	Promote the work of others: Nowadays everybody wants to be a star. However the problem with this is that nobody likes blatant self-promoters. Rather than trying vigorously to promote your own work, focus more on others and the community. If you have a blog, feature other photographers. This has many strengths. First of all, you will build a stronger connection with other people—who might mention your generosity to their own online networks. And ultimately by highlighting the work of other photographers, your work will be better known as well. And most of all, it feels great to help others through building an online community.
	Ask for the input of others: On my Facebook fan page, I always try to spur discussions by asking the input of others. Instead of simply showing your work and telling people to check it out, ask them what they think about your photos. Ask them what they like and possibly what could use improvement.   Create discussions by asking people’s opinion about certain topics. For example, you can ask: “What do you prefer, color or black and white?” This is a topic that many people have a strong opinion on, and creating a lively debate is often good.
	Be consistent: Although it is not necessary that you post new photographs or blog posts everyday, it is important that you are consistent. For example, if you regularly post three times a week (Monday, Wed, and Friday) and suddenly you quit posting for a week or two, all of the people who check out your site will no longer be interested and never come back.   Although it is difficult to be consistent with photography, you cannot rely on inspiration alone. As Chuck Close famously said, “Inspiration is for amateurs, and the rest of us just show up and get to work.” There will be days where you won’t want to go out and shoot or upload your work. However being consistent is crucial.
	Stand out: There are millions of photographers out there—what differentiates you from the rest of them? This can be accomplished by several ways: Stick to a genre of photography: Keep your portfolio consistent by only showing photos of either nature, portraits, or urban images. A cluttered portfolio looks unprofessional and you won’t be very memorable. Define your style: Don’t make your images look like everybody else’s. Either choose a radical type of post-processing or show your color through your writing. Be controversial: It is not good to always be wishy-washy in what you believe in. If you think that film is awesome and digital sucks, vocalize that. If you think that film is played out and just for hipsters, say the same. Controversy always attracts attention and will make you much better known.

So what tips do you have to build a strong online presence through social media? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts!

Eric Kim is an international street photographer based in Los Angeles. He has traveled all around the world, shooting photography in places such as Paris, London, Prague, Venice, and Seoul. Furthermore, he recently taught a street photography workshop in Beirut, Lebanon and currently runs a popular street photography blog as well. You can see his work here and also follow him on Facebook, Flickr, or Twitter.

Over the past six years I’ve spent quite a bit of money on cameras, camera attachments, lenses and even a GPS photo tracking device. The thing is, I just don’t use these products that often. I buy them, use them once or twice and put them away on a shelf. For the month of March, before the start of year seven, I’m dusting off those toys and using them each day in my Photo-A-Day Project.

You can enhance your photos with some very inexpensive products. From DSLRs to Camera Phones there are after market products that you can get to do some very cool things. For instance, I picked up some cheap lens attachments for my camera phone. I picked up a fisheye lens and a combination macro/wide angle lens that mounts magnetically on my camera phone. Since I always have my camera phone on me I have many opportunities to take a variety of photos with that camera and just changing the aspect of the photo makes it more interesting. This change can give you some good content for your blog.

You can write a Comparison/Contrast post
Whenever you get a new toy for your camera doing a post where you talk about how that differs from using the standard camera can be interesting. Showing people the dramatic differences in each shot can spark your imagination to take better photos and those photos can inspire your readers to comment on them. I try to do this when I use a new lens. I take a photo with the standard lens as a control image. Then I switch lenses and take photos from that same position of the same subject.

Taken with the Motorola DROID, standard camera setting, standard lens

Taken with the Motorola DROID, standard camera setting, wide angle lens

Taken with the Motorola DROID, standard camera setting, macro lens

Taken with the Motorola DROID, standard camera setting, fisheye lens

You can write a Software Enhancement post
If that wasn’t enough you can download any number of software programs to turn your camera phone into another type of camera. I use a program called Retro Camera on my DROID and with that I can make my photos look like 5 different types of cameras. So if you take your after market lenses and software programs you can come up with an infinite number of photos of the same subject. And in essence you can come up with an infinite number of posts on those combinations.

Taken with the Motorola DROID, Retro Camera Software Program – The Barbl setting, standard lens

Taken with the Motorola DROID, Retro Camera Software Program – The Barbl setting, Fisheye

You can write a review post about your toys.
I’ve heard more than enough bloggers asking how they get compensated for doing reviews on their blogs. I say to them to take a look at the products they already own and make their own review of those products. Do a creative one where you explore every conceivable aspect of that product and then link it to amazon.com. Do a useful review and you could start earning some money from that review from the referral as an amazon associate. People are looking for answers on how things work before they buy so write up your review, answer questions, welcome comments and additional questions. When you get more questions incorporate them and the answers into your review. Continue to enhance those reviews so you become the source for people interested in those products.

So, when you are thinking about creating content the main point is to find some ways to change things up once in a while. With a $20 set of lenses I can immediately think about a yearlong project, a number of review posts and a way to add more enhancement to your blog. What other topics for content creation can you think of based on adding a little something extra to an existing project?

Of course I want the new iPad. Not for the memory or the thinner design (I actually prefer a bulky, sturdy version for my 3-year-old who likes to throw it across the room). Just for the camera.

But, for those of you who care about the other aspects, here are the details on the new iPad 2:

• Main CPU is a dual core A5 processor – up to 2 times faster than the original iPad.

• New graphics processor that’s 9 times faster than the original iPad.
• Built-in cameras for photos and video: One for frontal FaceTime videoconferencing and one on the back.
• Built-in gyroscope, like the iPhone 4.
• Thickness: 8.8 mm (down from 13.4 mm)
• Weight: 1.3 pounds (down from 1.5 pounds)

The price and color options will remain the same. And it

So when is it coming out? March 11th and the 3G model will be available on both AT&T and Verizon networks.

Will you be grabbing one?

Sources: MacWorld, NY Times and Mashable

You’re a blogger and probably aren’t a professional graphic artist, but you know how important it is to include images with your blog posts. Stock photos are often boring so you want to show off some of your own photos. Let’s take a look at four options for image manipulation that don’t involve the huge learning curve or capital investment of full-blown Photoshop.

• Picnik (online, free) – Picnik is a decent image editor that can crop, resize, and perform global color adjustments to images online. If you use Flickr, you’ll find Picnik integration is built-in (on the Actions menu above a photo, choose Edit Photo in Picnik.
• Adobe Photoshop Elements (Windows, Mac, $72) – unlike its $700 big brother, Photoshop Elements doesn’t attempt to edit the kitchen sink. That said, if you’re a casual photographer preparing images for the web, odds are that you’ll be able to do everything you’ll want from this basic version of Photoshop. Based on the full Photoshop application, Photoshop Elements packs tons of useful features. Cropping, color adjustments, layers, cloning, image stitching and more can all be found. If you’re going to do much with photos, I strongly recommend Photoshop Elements as the best all-around image editing tool for casual photographers.
• GIMP – GNU Image Manipulation Program (Windows, Mac, Linux, free) – The GIMP is a powerful open source image editing program that’s evolved in a fashion that provides a substantial portion of the functionality of Adobe Photoshop. While it’s powerful, I see two things that might turn someone off about GIMP. The first is that (just like the full version of Photoshop) all of that power involves a pretty steep learning curve. The second is that as an open source project that wants to be like Photoshop, you’ll find that it’s just different enough that most Photoshop tutorials won’t directly translate or apply (which helps contribute to that steep learning curve).
• Paint.NET (Windows, free) – Paint.NET is another open source image editing program – this one based on Microsoft’s .NET software development framework. If you’re a Windows user, check it out since it offers a great set of features for that platform. While it doesn’t have quite as many features or polish as Photoshop Elements, for the types of tasks that bloggers often need (resizing, cropping, perhaps a black and white conversion, sharpening) you’ll probably find that Paint.NET can meet most of your needs.

What tools have you used? What are the best ways you’ve found to get images ready for your blog?

Aaron Hockley is a Portland-area photographer who also blogs about the photography ry and speaks about the intersection of social media and photography. Follow Aaron on Twitter.

The humble still image is a powerful social object. People simply love photographs of just about anything. Flickr, the popular image sharing web site, flourishes because it is a social network based on photography. The images range from on-the-spot shots taken with camera phones to professional quality images taken with high end DLSR cameras, and everything in between.

The internet is visual and Google loves images. Yet as I attend WordCamps and bar camps for bloggers there is rarely a session that has anything to do with still photography. There are often sessions for how to use video in blog posts but rarely still photography.

This year at BlogWorld there were a couple of sessions that were related to travel photography and I attended them all and learned from the travel industry. They know that to effectively advertise hotels and travel destinations they need amazing photographs and they know how to leverage photographs to attract customers.

It isn’t just the travel industry that can benefit from photography – it can be used to sell any idea or business! Yet still images are often of poor quality or missing from business blogs and web sites. Businesses can benefit from high quality photography and use it to attract patrons.

It is hard to understand why someone would pay a designer to design a site but will not take the time to find some great photos for it or hire someone to take them. Chances are, anyone visiting the site will notice the photographs before they see the design or read the content, and it is the photos that will grab their attention and keep them on the site.

Photographs are like glue on a blogs, they can keep readers on the site and they are like magnets that keep people coming back.

If you are involved in organizing a bar camp or word camp or conferences for bloggers consider offering sessions on photography, photo blogging, and mobile blogging and how to use Flickr. Photographs can be the foundation of a solid social media marketing plan. It has worked well for me for years. The people who read my blogs may forget what they read but they remember the photographs and they remember me because of them.

Take advantage of the humble low tech and inexpensive still image as a way to attract blog readers. Photographs are social and they are media. Maybe in 2011 there will be more photography related sessions at the BlogWorld and New Media Expo.

Teresa Boardman Realtor/Broker with St. Paul Home Realty.  Serial blogger, writer and photographer and founder of the award winning St. Paul Real Estate Blog in 2005.  Her blog started as an experiment in online marketing and is used today as an example of the best practices in real estate blogging. Boardman also writes a weekly column for Inman News and is the author of the St. Paul Photo Blog.

It’s widely accepted that including images with blog posts is a great way to draw and retain attention; finding relevant images that can be used while respecting the artist’s copyright can sometimes be a challenge. One good source for images are the millions of images licensed under Creative Commons licenses.

What is Creative Commons

In many countries (including the United States), copyright laws automatically protect a piece of work at the time it is created. You own the copyright to your photos as soon as you press the shutter button. With some limited exceptions, using a photograph or other material requires permission from the copyright holder. Creative Commons consists of a set of content licenses in which the creator retains some rights to the material but makes the material available for a given set of usages without requiring specific permission for each use.

A Creative Commons license can be interpreted as “This photo (or other material) can be used for _____ and in exchange I ask for _____.”

Common Creative Commons Terms

Most Creative Commons licenses require Attribution, which means that credit needs to be given to the creator of the work. While the license technically says the creator can specify the form of attribution, the convention online is to include a line of text that says something like “Photo by Steve Stevenson” with the text being a link back to the photographer (either their main website or the location where they posted the photo).

Some Creative Commons licenses specify No Derivatives which means that the photo may be used as-is but cannot be “remixed”, edited, or used as part of another work. Some licenses specify that the image is Share Alike which means that it can be remixed/edited but that the resulting work must also be licensed under the same Creative Commons license.

The other term to be aware of is that some licenses specify the image may only be used for Non Commercial usage. This can be a bit of a gray area for bloggers – is it commercial use if you accept advertising and make money from your blog? I generally play it safe and if I’m going to use Creative Commons images I only use ones licensed for commercial use. After all, my blog is a business.

Finding Creative Commons Images

You can use Flickr’s Advanced Search to find images for free use on your blog. Head over there, put in the term you’d like to search for, then scroll down and check the box to indicate you want to find only Creative Commons-licensed content. As I mentioned above, I also tick the box for content to be used commercially.

Creative Commons images can be a great way to add interesting images to your blog at no cost. As long as you respect the license (commercial vs. non-commercial) and include a link back with attribution you shouldn’t run into any hassles.

What experiences have you had with Creative Commons images? Do you find them to be helpful?

Aaron Hockley is a Portland-area photographer who also blogs about the photography industry and speaks about the intersection of social media and photography. Follow Aaron on Twitter.