Where do you blog?

My friends have jokingly told me several times that I should start this sort of blog or that sort of blog. It’s always been a laugh, and not much has come of it (though they certainly planted a seed, I now realize).

Yesterday I had a disgustingly long wait for the bus, and decided that instead of stand around doing nothing and getting frustrated I’d wander around the stop and photograph things. I jokingly told myself I’d make a “things I see at the bus stop” blog. I got a lot of shots, and enjoyed the process of trying to improve my photos.

During the rest of the day I took several photos, generally of whatever caught my fancy (including a clothing store window that said, “Introducing THE LAUNDERED SHIRT”), when it occurred to me that I’d love to do an actual photo blog. A place where I can put up my photos and write about them, and a place where my family and friends can go and see what’s going on in my life - especially since I’m halfway across the country from most of them. And if random strangers want to read, they’d be welcome to as well, but I wouldn’t expect it.

I’ve been thinking about this since last night, and I would like some opinions on the places people blog. I’ve currently had some experience with LiveJournal and with Vox, and they aren’t the sort of webspace I want for this. That said, perhaps I’m overlooking something great with them, and I’d be willing to consider it.

I don’t mind paying a small amount for a blog like this, since I expect posting photos usually drives costs up, but I don’t think I can afford something that’s it’s own space like bluekangaroosphotos.com. If I could, that’d be great, as it’ll be easy for my family to remember, but it seems unlikely.

So I decided to ask here. Surely we have people who blog and have opinions on the software. Ideas or tips would be appreciated as well, but this is just something I think my family would get a kick out of, and I know I’d get a kick out of sharing what’s going on in my world (to a degree) with them with all these “new-fangled” tools.

I blog over at Vox.

It’s free and they have a high threshold of the amount of photos and stuff that you can upload. That, and it is really easy to use.

Flickr is a photo sharing site, but I find myself leaving small bloggy descriptions on some of my photos, even though I have a blog too. It would be easy enough to expand from there.

I have a Vox blog, too.

I actually do have a flickr site, and a friend was kind enough recently to give me a pro account so I could do more organizing of my photos. It just doesn’t strike me as what I’m looking for, though I’ll definitely go back and reevaluate it as a possibility.

I haven’t figured out how much space vox gives yet, but it seems like everything there is sort of more visually complex than I want.

I can’t afford it, I think, but I’d love to have something like the Restaurant Widow. I think she uses TypePad.

Anyway, thanks so much. I’ll go back and check out and see what I’m missing in those sites. I’m still open to other suggestions, as well.

BlueKangaroo, I think that’s a great idea! One of the coolest sites I ever visited was a guy who explores old abandoned buildings (think:creepy mental hospitals and beautiful old convent/girls’ schools) and posts the photos. He is really, really good. I think I may even have heard about him here.

And I love urban-surrealism kind of photos. National Lampoon used to have a back page with photos of signs just like the one you described. My all-time-favorite in that vein, however, has to be this.

I only blog on MySpace, though. Much to my surprise, at one time I had a readership of about 200 people a week, when I was writing pithy stuff on the perils and quandaries of being a grownup punkrocker.

Tumblr makes it very easy to set up a simple blog.

WordPress is nice, you can make a free account, and they will host your blog. They have really nice layouts, and lots of options like customizable headers for your blog too. Some people like Blogger.

I second Wordpress. Spend $10 for a domain name, like $30 for a year of hosting, and install Wordpress (for free). So you’ll have your own domain, and a totally customizable blog. Here’s my Wordpress blog - notice how you can’t even tell it’s Wordpress? That’s because it’s totally customizable so it just looks like your own site.

It looks really nice. Who do you use for hosting for it to be so cheap?

I’ve done a pathetically small amount of photoblogging on Blogspot.