Before I get to this month’s photo round-up, I’m asking you to help me out. As I start working on my talk for BritMums Live!, I want to make sure that the information I give you is information that you most want to hear. With that in mind, I’d really appreciate it if you could fill out this quick survey for me. It’ll take you less than five minutes and your help is greatly appreciated. The more of you who complete it, the more relevant my talk will be to you.
Now back to our regularly scheduled programming…
Using photography in fun an interesting ways is a great way to drive traffic to your website. The following people have all created viral photography content for their blogs, which has, in some cases, landed them on daytime TV being interviewed about their work.
One of my favourites has to be Reasons My Son is Crying, which inspired me to write this post on I Carried a Watermelon. I know we shouldn’t really laugh at them when they have tears streaming down their faces. But sometimes it’s just so darned ridiculous and cute that you have to. This simple Tumblr site has gone completely viral and the originator, Greg Pembroke, is now running competitions for people to submit their own crying baby pictures and has appear on TV chat shows across the US. One of the great thing about this series is that the images are not professionally taken; it’s the concept that drives the interest in the work.
Russian photographer Andy Prokh created this heart-warming series of images that explore the relationship between his daughter and their cat. The images are always touching and often funny. It is this combination of emotions that has makes it the kind of photographic series that people feel they need to share. Although I’ve written posts about my daughter’s relationship with our cat, from the cat’s point of view (you can read A Cat’s Tale here, there, and thither), I think I need to get my camera out and start documenting their tumultuous relationship.
Family pets are a great source of photographic inspiration. I love this popular site about Maddie the Coonhound. With the clean, often funny images of Maddy, you can see why Maddie has become an Internet sensation. The project started as a 365 day trip around all 50 states of the US by Theron and Maddie. What a fantastic way to document such a once-in-a-lifetime experience (that other people just happened to enjoy vicariously, too).
Toy Stories is a wonderful anthropological body of work created by Gabriele Galimberti, looking at the toys and possessions that children hold most dear across the world. As I approach Baby’s second birthday, which means another influx of toys into our crowded life, I can’t help but look at the images of the children in poorer countries with their small hoard of toys and feel tempted to cull Baby’s collection. I love a series like this that really makes the viewer think.
Finally, what is going on here? Oh yes, it’s babies in mugs, but not really in mugs. Just photographed so it looks like they are in the mugs. Baby Mugging is one of those odd Internet sensations that make you go, “Huh?” The thing that is different about this viral photographic trend is that it’s a collective body of work, that is, not that of a single creator. So go on; you know you want to get in on the baby mugging action.
This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it should be enough to get you smiling today and thinking about how to use photography creatively on your site. Please feel free to share links to your favourite viral photography series below, or if you have a series that you’ve created yourself, we’d love to see it. And PLEASE REMEMBER TO DO MY SURVEY! Thank you in advance.
About Julia Boggio
Julia Boggio is a professional photographer (www.juliaboggiostudios.com) and columnist for Photo Professional magazine. In 2010 and 2011, Julia won Entrepreneur of the Year in the Merton Business Awards as well as the You & Your Wedding Bride's Choice award in 2010. Her own mummy blog, www.icarriedawatermelon.co.uk, features images she has taken of her daughter and stories of becoming a mum while maintaining a successful business. Julia is also well-known across the globe for recreating the dance from Dirty Dancing at her wedding, the video of which went viral on You Tube and landed her in the arms of Patrick Swayze on The Oprah Winfrey Show. She will be joining us at BritMums Live! to talk about how to improve your photography for your blog. You won’t want to miss it!
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Mamacook
Sunday 19th of May 2013
"Reasons my son is crying" is so wrong and yet so right. All people without kids must see it before having kids. It should be law!
Jennifer Howze
Wednesday 15th of May 2013
OMG "Reasons My Son Is Crying" is absolutely hysterical. It strikes you that adults are not that different from kids. Instead of drying, we strop around and drink alcohol too copiously. THEN we sit down and cry ridiculously.