Are you a blogger? I need your help!

This is a call out to all my fellow bloggers!!!

I need help on a paper!  I am really excited about it because its such a cool project and it involves all of you!

I am taking a class called Visual Culture which is basically studying how people look at images and how they interpret them.  Basically it is how I feel/think/react to a image (photo, film, painting, ect).  My reaction/feelings/thoughts are dependent upon the culture I identify with.  The class also deals with understanding how a person/company can manipulate images to prove a point that the image was never intended to prove.  I saw a great example of this recently on a commercial for a allergy nasal spray.  They had three Van Gogh paintings hanging on a wall, one of his self portraits, the Sunflowers painting, and a picture with a woman and cat.  The "joke" was that the Van Gogh portrait was allergic to the other two paintings and he needed allergy spray.  I am sure Van Gogh never intended that his painting be used in this manner but the advertisers manipulated the images to make it work.  They do it all the time.

My paper is comparing family photo albums with family/personal blogs. 
Things I am noticing...

-I think that having a blog online documenting your children's lives is very different then a family photo album.  Not just in the narration, but also in the  way photos are taken. 

-Often in a photo album there are highly posed photos and photos of big events like births, birthdays, Christmases, Easter, Baptisms, ect.  Family/Personal blogs do not have the same kinds of photographs at all.  Many are spur of the moment and they often evoke strong feelings to the other bloggers.  Am I correct? 

-I noticed on one blog that out of 45 photos including people, only 15 showed their face.  Mothers seem to be getting more creative when it comes to photographing their children and to me it seems like capturing the "small moments" are becoming as important as birthdays and holidays.

Keep in mind that I am comparing blogs with photo albums (real ones that sit on a bookshelf and you show to your son's girlfriends).

Here is what I need to know from you...

-Why do you enjoy blogging?
-What is your blog to you (diary, journal, online scrapbook, a way to meet people, ect)?
-Why are you documenting your life in a public way(online)?
-What do you hope to get out of blogging?
-What do you do differently on your blog that you do not do with your family albums?
-How do you represent your family on your blog?  What twist do you have?  Are you using your children to model the clothes you make?  Are you showing the world how your family lives on a ranch, farm, or city high-rise?  Or how you are all living off the grid, going green, or homeschooling?
-Do you still maintain another photo album where you can view your photos and show them to others but it is completely private?  Either at home, computer or online.  How?
-When you are photographing your family do you compose photos with the knowledge that they might be online?  For example, when I took Halloween photos of my daughter I made sure I cropped out the apartment # of my home.
-How has blogging changed the way you look at photography?
-Please add anything else that you think I might need to know.

For blog readers:

-Tell me why you like to read other peoples personal blogs, why are some your favorites and what draws you to a blog repeatedly?

-Last but not least, I need permission to quote you in my paper and online because I know you all will want to see the final product.

Anyone who would like to help is welcome!

If you would like to participate please leave a comment or email me at binah06 (at) yahoo (dot) com.!

Thanks for your help!

Comments

[Julie]

I am happy to participate! Send me an email and I'll respond.

[AG]

In terms of this observation: "I noticed on one blog that out of 45 photos including people, only 15 showed their face. Mothers seem to be getting more creative when it comes to photographing their children and to me it seems like capturing the "small moments" are becoming as important as birthdays and holidays."
There are very practical reasons for both of these items.

1) If you talk a lot about where you live and what's going on in your life, you may not want to give away the final piece of information and tell the world what you look like. -- Don't invite disaster. So pictures with faces are the ones not posted, but they certainly still exist.

2)Film and developing pictures the old traditional way can get expensive pretty fast. In contrast, taking a bagillion digital pictures and publishing them online, or sending them by email costs very very little. People can afford to take lots of pictures and feel free to experiment. They can take enough pictures to become better photographers. They can take pictures of all those everyday moments.

So how much of what you are noticing is a difference between public (blogs) and private (albums). And how much is a change in the way photography is done in general?