Q&A: The Photography Post

A New Magazine Model, Part 3

In the final installment of my three part series about an evolving magazine model, I’ve decided to end with a grand finale of sorts. With the bulk of content migrating online, there seems to be an emergence of individual online identities. In the photo community, there are a few people who have risen to become sources for our online information. Those who come to mind immediately include Rob Haggart, Jörg Colberg, Andrew Hetherington, and, of course, Rachel Hulin. Rachel, who is also an amazing photographer, has been a popular barometer for great photography for some time now. I’ve been hooked on her witty style of writing since the good ol’ days of Photoshelter’s now defunct Shoot! The Blog.

Since then, she’s has been parking her bits of wisdom and humor on her own blog here, which is one part industry news, one part humor, and a heavy dose of great photography. Naturally, I was excited to hear about her new project, The Photography Post. While TPP is a source for original content, it is also a marketplace and a visual aggregate of other blogs. It’s this aggregate functionality which is the most exciting part here. It plays into the immediacy of information we all crave, and the filter we inevitably need when being bombarded with online content. Introduced on February 16th, TPP has already become a huge resource for the online photo community. With fellow editors and contributors Danielle Swift and Kate Steciw, Rachel has created a way for us to step back and and get a larger picture of our online sources.

Since Rachel is known for her lighthearted writing style, I’ll sprinkle in some equally jovial photography from our very own Ryan Schude. Also, if you’ve been paying attention, you also know Rachel has a thing for floating people…so this selection is for you!

Check out Ryan’s blog and portfolio, and feel free to contact me any time with questions, ideas, or anything else that comes up. Thank you so much to Rachel Hulin for taking the time to contribute! Don’t forget to check out The Photograph Post! Enjoy!

– Jacqueline Bovaird, Glasshouse Assignment

JACQUELINE BOVAIRD: Tell me a little about your background and how it led to being involved with The Photography Post…

RACHEL HULIN: Well, I’ve been involved in the photography industry in many different ways for some time. I was a graduate student in the joint NYU/ICP program in 2001, and ended up working in the administration office at ICP. I met amazing students and faculty and industry stalwarts and artists, and have kept in touch with many of them throughout the years.

After ICP I moved on to photo editing, mostly online. I worked at Nerve, Rolling Stone online, Radar Magazine, and People.com, among others. I tried to create really dynamic and new content for the online arena. Around 2005 and 2006, photo blogging became a bit of a thing, and blogs by photographers and editors started popping up everywhere. I was instantly hooked, and jumped at the chance a few years later to write Photoshelter’s blog, Shoot the blog, which really drew me into the online discussion in a big way.

Since then I’ve been maintaining A Photography Blog, shooting a lot of my own work, and developing The Photography Post with Danielle Swift and Kate Steciw.

JB: How did TPP come about? What were the goals from the beginning?

RH: I had worked with Kate at Nerve.com (she is a super talented photographer) and she introduced me to Danielle, who has also been in the industry for years. We were all hooked on blogs, and wanted to create a centralized, visual place where professionals from all genres of photography could join in a discussion. We also wanted to give the many talented bloggers out there a platform that, through reciprocity, encourages them to continue what they are doing.

We hope that we can connect otherwise disparate voices and ideas within the photo industry by supplying this curated overview of the blogosphere. We’re also trying to have a little fun. (see Friday round up)

Ryan Schude (blog, portfolio)

JB: I believe the blog aggregate format, when used well, is brilliant. How did you decide on this format?

RH: Oh gosh, we had so many meeting over the course of about a year and it’s now kind of a blur! I can’t remember the exact moment- I remember we were wanting to create a sort of visual twitter, and we discussed the idea with our brilliant developer Henry Tam, and he made it happen. We went through a lot of iterations, and it was exciting to see the feeds start to have a life of their own.

I still get excited checking it out every few hours; it’s amazing to see what kind of visual interactions the feeds have. Sometimes the juxtapositions are shockingly awesome, and sometimes something weird happens, like all 90 blogs will post a purple image on the same day. It’s fun to see common threads appear.

It was really hilarious and gratifying to see our homepage pop up several times on the day we launched. Very Marshall Mcluhan!

JB: How do you see it as different and unique from other online photography resources?

RH: I think we’re unique in giving everyone a little piece of real estate, and by sort of letting the content be king. We choose the blogs we feature, but after that, they run on their own and they update on their own.

Hopefully we can continue to roll out community-driven initiatives in the coming months, but we’re really excited about all the great feedback we’ve gotten so far.

Ryan Schude

JB: How do you find new content for the site?

RH: Brainstorming, meetings, and excel sheets! And we’re all kind of web junkies, or you know- nerds. So we have a lot of ideas bouncing around.

JB: So many times we all put things out into the internet black hole and never know what might come back at us. Since its release, it seems the response to TPP has been huge. Any particular moment that made you think, “wow, this worked!”?

RH: Well, we hope it will get bigger and bigger! We’re thrilled with the response so far, but want to continue to do awesome things, and ride the photo wave of the future. So to speak.

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Keep a look out for next month’s question and email blast! If you have any ideas, comments, or if you would like to participate, please don’t hesitate to contact me, Jacqueline Bovaird. I am always looking for new voices to add to this evolving discussion.

Jacqueline Bovaird  •  212 – 462 – 4538

jacqueline@glasshouseassignment.com