Blogging is a great way to share a series of photos from your work. Sadly though many of us don't do it any longer because let's be honest; it's a pain in the ass. Fortunately a new web service, Exposure, is out that looks beautiful and is a perfect replacement for those that loathe blogging.
Alright, so first let me mention a few important things. If you are the type of person that loves to tweak everything in your blog, change your background colors, pick different fonts, install all kinds of add-ons then Exposure is definitely not for you. On the other hand if you love things simple, you don't want to spend a lot of time putting up a post of photos and you are a minimalist that loves clean design than Exposure is definitely worth checking out.
What makes Exposure so great is it's ease of use. I had a group of photographer friends all test it out while putting this article together and all of them reported back that in less than 10 minutes they were able to have their work published and ready to share. The group all agreed that it made blogging so much easier and those who despise blogging said they would actually consider start doing it again. Myself included.
I for one haven't blogged in over a year, but after opening a free test account with Exposure I had three shoots posted in short time (you are allowed up to three free.) In fact, I loved the service enough that I wanted to continue posting up some more shoots so I opened a premium account for $9/month (or $99/year.) You can go see my page here.
While I am planning on using Exposure to replace what I was doing on my blog, the interesting thing is you won't find the word blog on Exposure's site. Instead they call it photo narratives. Founders Luke Beard and Kyle Bragger surely did that on purpose to keep the comparisons to sites like Wordpress to a minimum. As I mentioned earlier, Exposure is not feature rich like a blog, but in my opinion much better looking than most. The strength of Exposure is in how it's photo narratives are laid out to really show off the images and quickly add some text to accompany those images. It's a WYSIWYG service that allows you to drag and drop images right onto your page and make edits to the text directly without the need for any coding or opening up a text box designer. It really is about as simple as it gets.
Here are some more examples of Exposure pages.
Stephen Vosloo
Christina Blanarovich
Timothy Eyrich
Chad DiBlasio
Brett Benham
What I love most about Exposure though is not how it looks on the computer but how it displays on phones and tablets. The photos are completely responsive and so when you turn your display from portrait to landscape or back again the photos respond by auto arranging for the best display.
While I am absolutely loving the experience I have had so far with Exposure, have already become a premium subscriber and plan on using it throughout 2014 instead of my old blog, there are a few features I would love to see added.
1. Ability to add SEO keywords to each post.
2. A feature to add comments on the bottom of the posts. I realize not everyone would want this so it would be nice to have this feature as something you could turn on or off in the settings.
3. Custom URL - which is already in the works and will be released in the next few weeks.
4. Ability to pinch to zoom while viewing the photos on a phone or tablet.
5. Add links directly into the text of the narrative.
6. A button at the end of a post to share to Pinterest. Ones for Twitter and Facebook already exist.
If you are like me and have fallen months, even a full year, behind on blogging your photos then Exposure might be just the answer for you. I know for me it has become the perfect answer to display my work in gorgeous photo-first story format and do it quickly so that publishing my work is no longer another day's task but something that is actually quite refreshing when I hit the publish button. Go give it a try, your first three posts are free.
Great article!
This is awesome! I wouldn't personally use it because I majored in English and blogging is the only way I practice my education. :) However, tons of friends of mine feel stumped when it comes to blogging, so I'll definitely let them know about it.
Gotta show off your writing skills somewhere Michelle! Haha.
Hey Michelle, you can still write long form written entries in Exposure too!
Thanks for your post Trevor : ) If anyone has any questions feel free to email luke@exposure.so
I've been a little apprehensive about starting a blog. This just might be the right alternative. Might you be able to address some of the missing features mentioned above by Trevor that might be a welcomed addition?
as a non-blogger I can totally see myself using this as an alternative to doing nothing at all.
love exposure!
Fantastic! This is definitely a must try.
no SEO optimization opportunities as far as I can see. But the gallery is really sexy looking. Maybe room for improvement.
The layout looks familiar. It's similar to VSCO Grid. This is an example of mine in VSCO http://fritzasuro.vsco.co/
Fritz - click on one of the examples above and I think you will notice it is actually quite different. Rather than feature one photo it features whole narratives. Here's my page... https://wedding.exposure.so
Yes I did check. Don't get me wrong, I just said it looks familiar as when I was on one of the few pages, the "feel" was almost the same that I though I was on a VSCO Grid. I do actually like the minimalist style of Exposure, and would give it a try soon.
I have to agree with you. It really looks similar to VSCO Grid.
Another VSCO user here, and that was exactly what I thought when I first saw Exposure. Then I noticed the pricing.
It's almost a carbon copy of VSCO branding and ideas. They just made the front grid images link to full blog posts.
For Some reason i can not view the articles. Only the first page with the opening photo but the rest stops/quits safari on the iPad Air
Tumblr is ridiculously easy and has a lot more customization available if you want it.
I wish it had support for PNG and didn't convert everything to crappy JPEG.
This looks like a great platform for portfolios, but such text-light 'blog' posts are terrible for SEO and connecting to consumers. Even short written narratives are important for showing your expertise as a photographer. There are plenty of resources on the internet to help get you writing–and writing well. Captions, context, and introductions are crucial when telling your story. And in all the examples on Exposure, I never once saw a call to action.
The SEO thing is my main concern as well. What's the point of a beautiful looking blog if nobody can find it? It does look awesome though and I'll certainly be giving it a go and keeping an eye on any updates.
this is clearly a sponsored post
could you please - use in you posts some pro photographers - photos - not just amateurs - PLEASE...
it's not about just this one...:)
I don't understand your comment...
Why not just setup your blog like this and save yourself the money... Too simple/easy not to do it yourself.
Yes because finding a web host, and a domain name is free. And yeah, so is spending the time to figure out how to do it yourself.
I'm not really impressed by it. It looks a bit like the vsco website. There also isn't a way to easily cycle through the picture in the full view which makes it a bit annoying after a few pictures. The larger pictures load also pretty slow. For what they offer it seems to be a bit expensive. Get some webspace and Koken and you've a very simple but more flexible photo optimized CMS which syncs easily with your lightroom library thanks to their lightroom plugin.
What is the benefit of this site over 500px?