What do you think makes a good travel blog?

[Iain_U1250]

I have loved reading some blogs and switch off after a page or two on other blogs. Sometimes the trip is to nowhere special, but the photos and humour of the writer just keeps me reading. Other blogs have a fantastic destination, but the writing is so boring I just scan the photos. Even then the photos start to get boring, same point of view, another sunset etc, and often there is no sense of scale, trees might be massive, but you can't tell because there is nothing to compare against.

So often blogs goes along the lines of "This is where we are, and these photos are what we saw" They don't say what they think about the place, what was good, what was bad, problems and solutions, route changes, other people they met etc.

One of my pet hates is blogs that don't have any photos of the people writing the blog, so many times there is a photo of a campsite with all the gear set-up but no people, looks like a ghost camp, or loads of talk about what they did, but no photos of them doing it. I have read blogs where I have no idea what the people writing it look like at all. .

Videos are also great, but most times is it just an endless video of a road through the windscreen, I am guilty of that as we have a dash mounted camera. Looking at the Kamillo videos http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=147gnfjNyjw and I realised that dash cams are boring, and it is all the other shots and angles that make it interesting, and especially with the travelers in the video. It takes time and effort to get out and take video of trucks negotiating obstacles, or do an in-car interview, especially when something is going wrong or is just very funny.

I would love to hear opinion about what makes a good travel blog, as I would love to improve my own so that people enjoy reading them, after all, there is really no point writing something if no one reads it.

 

[Sirocco]

Very interesting points raised Iain. I try to vary our blogs with the way we write them but i'm still not sure how that comes across for people who don't know us.

The problem is that when your on the road your enjoying yourself, you are there for yourself, not for others. So spending time taking photos of everything is often quite difficult. Doing the same with video is often off the scale for a normal trip. If you have a passion for photography or videography then this can be different and the same goes for writing. You can probably tell from peoples blogs what their main draw is. Mine is quite clearly photography and not writing! and our trip last year set out to only photograph with some timelapse and not to video at all. Just as well really as there was no time for video on our trip at all. Don't get me wrong, I would love to have done a serious, semi-pro job of our trip but the extra gear, learning, time, editing? It just wasn't going to happen so we accepted it from the off.

Maybe Australia will be different, I don't know.

G

 

[Iain_U1250]

Good point, when we are on the road, it is just for ourselves, writing a blog is something I did in the evenings, just something to pass the time. My main interest in our last trip was taking photos for our Naked Outback project. My wife also had a blog, but found it too much trouble to write, and stopped posting about half way. I stayed with it to the end, but the blog and the trip report got a few weeks behind. I think there was about 30 people who followed the trip report, and about 10 on the blog.

This made me think a why I was writing the blog and the trip reports. The trip report was a shortened version of the blog, with less photos and more technical stuff rather than the personal stuff that was on the blog. We took loads of video, but I concentrated on the photos, and left the video to my wife, who wasn't really that interested. Editing video is very time consuming, and in the end we did not bother and never got around to editing even one bit of it.

We met loads of people on our trip, and about half of them said they had a blog. We swapped emails and blog addresses etc, but most were so boring that I never got past the first page. I think that is how most people viewed our blog as well. Our blog was a bit different to our trip reports, mainly because of a different audience. I have written short stories. ( being dyslexic mean that I have to edit my stuff a couple of time as I make so many mistakes that the first read does not pick up.) I find writing interesting, probably because I am not so good at it and always want to try something new and try to get better at it.

One thing we did notice was that there were many different types of travel blogs as there are travelers. Some like to stay in a nice spot for months on end, they say they are living on the road, but to me they are just setting up house somewhere else. Their blogs are normally very boring and meant for their immediate family and friends. Often they are so disjointed that they don't make sense when suddenly they are somewhere else without even mentioning they were moving.

Then there are those who want to "do" a route, like those who "do" the Old Telegraph Track or the Canning Stock route. I found some of the blogs informative, especially if we were going to "do" a certain route. If you read a few of them, then you generally found what was interesting to do on the way. Unfortunately so many of the blogs are just wrong, with incorrect information, as people write them when they get back and sometimes get things out of order. We found that guide books on the net, or printed books were normally accurate.

I have great respect for people who make videos of their trips, even a 10 minute video must take hours to edit and produce.

I must admit that I have not read you blog, I've looked at the photos though, and they are great

 

[Rovertrader]

I believe the writer has a great deal to do with the success of the blog. I am an engineer, and thus not too wordy nor descriptive on 'our travel time', yet enjoy a well written blog- if it is pertinent. I think many of us will read a less than interesting blog IF it contains info that is of benefit, wether for info's sake, or more so if one has plans to do a similar experience.
Pics with good write ups concerning location and details are always beneficial.

 

[DiploStrat]

I have always considered this to be an excellent site: http://www.travelin-tortuga.com/Travelin-Tortuga/index.html

I started reading it years ago because I was interested in Tigers and they have lots of good information. But beyond that, they strike a good balance between reporting each days menus and problems and focussing on the larger arc of their travels - each update is monthly to quarterly. They populate the text with images and then have galleries that you can go to should you want more.

As in all such things, scholars will differ.

 

[4x4x4doors]

As noted above, there is no "one size fits all" perfect blog. I try to be aware of what holds me on another blog and include that. We get interested in the off the wall trivia so will spend a bit of digital ink on the odd sign we saw or the tradition of a meal we enjoyed.
I grew up in a time when letter writing was much more prevalent than phone calls (from a hard-wired phone) and emails didn't exist. I've sorted through old photos my mother took and tried to determine where she was or what was going on. This lead me to focus more on a long version of the post card with my pictures and trying to create a record for my family and friends who weren't there with me to have some idea of my experience.
I don't usually try to include the details of how we did this (the arrangements to be made or the way a piece of equipment worked) as I figure that others who follow along will be able to work that out for themselves or other sources using their particulars.
I think I want a good storyteller.

(I'm also a believer in not letting facts ruin the telling of a good story! :coffeedrink

 

[Neuner]

I always believe in KISS, Keeping It Simple. It's what I prefer but notice readers of all sorts leaning this way.

Keep your site and writing un-cluttered, including photos, navigation and any advertisement. Make it easy to navigate. It drives me crazy when I have to click around or a site opens a separate tab on my phone or browser to view or enlarge photos because they are too small to tell what they are in the main story. I won't view a video unless it auto plays within the main writing AND is interesting. For me, photos don't have to be professional to be very interesting. Use them to correlate with the story at hand and the quality becomes second. I've seen great photographers who are lacking in interest because they don't try different points of view. Always of beautiful sunsets or open landscapes. Never of their broken axle or the major obstacle they over came. Get on the ground and shoot up, get up high and shoot down on a campsite or obstacle. Show us at your worst and best! If you solved an issue, give additional information on how you solved it. Make us feel like we are there enjoying or hating the moment. More impulsive shots and not you staged with the locals! We also don't need to know every minute of every trip or even every day for that matter, especially if it's something you wouldn't tell to others at a dinner party.

 

[photo_i]

As a photographer I truly believe that picture tells a thousand words. If I decide to write a blog I think it will be mostly in a format of a photo album - lots of pictures with short descriptions. But if something out of ordinary will happen then there will be a story about it. But then again - I haven't even started about that blog business, who know what will it shape like when I actually come around to it. Right now we only have a Facebook page, waiting to get on the road (or rather off road :smiley_drive: ).

 

[Sirocco]

Well we have over 600 following on Facebook and over 700 on the website. I would be interested in what people think of it and how we could improve. As a Geologist I find it hard to veer from the facts! So there is a lot of info on our site for people who want to follow our route in the future. I also find myself posting a huge number of photos in amongst the text as I to get bored of excessive 'written word'.

I hear what your saying about photos to tell a story, but as I states in the 2nd post. Im usually too hungry and tired at the end of a hard day to bother and that is why they are missing (most of the time). We do have a few from Siberia where situations were so ridiculous that we had to take photos (like repairing punctures and replacing brake pads in a sand quarry at night whilst cooking) We do have a huge collection of photos though from a number of cameras used on the trip.

Iain - I have found the opposite to you with regards to info, maybe its to do with where we travel (Australia vs Russia) but the guidebooks are limited in central Asia, Mongolia and Russia. Nearly all our info was collated from forums and travellers especially with regards to visas, borders, formalities etc. The books were only used as a rough guide to plan our route and see sight. Even then they were a limited entity.

G

 

[escadventure]

When I started writing and snapping photos, I was amazed at how little I knew about doing it well. Even now, having learned so much and had some level of success, I still only know enough to realize how much practice it requires to communicate well.

Within the framework we see the writing and photography here- most of it is from roving vagabonds whose primary goal is to experience the world at large. We're fortunate they have any time left to share some of it with us. In this case it might come down to a couple things- a little creativity, and an understanding of how a third person might perceive one's thoughts as written and photographed.

 

[photo_i]

I hear what your saying about photos to tell a story, but as I states in the 2nd post. Im usually too hungry and tired at the end of a hard day to bother and that is why they are missing (most of the time).

First of all - I love your blog (and photos in particular)! Second - I really hope that not every day of our travel will be so hard, that I will be so dead at the end of it to bother do anything besides feeding, otherwise it kind of demise the purpose of early retirement.

BTW, when we traveled with our Yellow Fella (Sportsmobile) I did a sporadic write up at Live Journal - http://photo-i.livejournal.com - not much, just a few key stories.

O.

 

[Ozjourney]

Speaking from a video prospective, one of the major problems with producing words or video on a trip is it is a lot of work, your always thinking about the story - what happened next - what have I filmed today. In the end you worry more about the video than enjoying the trip. When the camera comes out everyone changes there actions, also when things start to go bad, and mistakes are made no one wants to be seen on camera. It is very hard to film and this is what makes a good real video so things get watered down or skipped.

On the positive side you have a record of the trip which you can enjoy for years to come.

There's the trip I filmed across Russia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai8TbcAiVFk&list=PLcu85g8lw_auHsi2vn69NzAQYDTB8Bi7M

regards

Steve

 

[photo_i]

There's the trip I filmed across Russia
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ai8TbcAiVFk&list=PLcu85g8lw_auHsi2vn69NzAQYDTB8Bi7M

I've started watching your video - great stuff! Especially like musical background with balalaikas and tambourines.

 

[xCSx]

I love the blogs which really capture what the place is like... I've really enjoyed drive nacho drive, unurban, that couple with the 87 4runner. Needs good mix of pictures and a sense of the adventure.

 

[TheseCoordinates]

I always love reading blogs with a mixture of humor, information and great photos. Sometimes I'd much rather have the photos tell the story or allow the writer to transport me to where they were at with their words…I'd be taken.

I'm still a new blogger. I've taken lots of photos from our hikes and backpacking trips but I plan on documenting our pre-trip plans to overland countries on the lower half of the equator.