I'm going to toy with an old school post in the style of the 2000s. This post inspired by someone else's blog post. Skoobs writes:

I’ve had a dedicated photo blog in the past, and I’m considering bringing it back. I, personally, love the look of a dedicated photo blog. They’re clean and usually fairly interesting.

Further discussion is happening on Micro.blog. Jamie Thingelstad:

For me, the thing that I keep considering a photo blog for is to have a place where I "speak with photos" instead of with words. And a way to push my creative borders. But I worry about the mental cost and overhead of two sites. The other thing I would like is it feels odd to post an image I captured years ago on my blog today, but on a photo blog maybe that would seem less odd.

Yes!

I've also toyed with photo blogs as separate entity in the past. One time I built software to do it and kept it going for a while (archive.org). It really allowed for reflection on a photo and telling a story. I was always inspired by the photoblogs from places like the Boston Globe back around 2010. Telling a story with words next to a photo is… probably not quite about the art of photography, as that art mostly allows the photos to speak for themselves. (They're worth 1,000 words after all!) For whatever reason, having a photo and words together as a feature really has always interested me, whether it's traditional photographic art or not.

I've been struggling in general with how to manage a website, blog, shared photos, and shared everything else for a while. I've played with Micro.blog, blot.im, write.as, bearblog.dev, HTML-only, and static site generators. They all don't completely land for me.

Micro.blog has come the closest, I think, but it requires really letting go of control. Particular for the idea of a photo blog, you can certainly have photos appear on Micro.blog, but without getting your hands deep into Hugo, the photos are just going to be in with your regular stream of content. (Micro.blog does offer a Photos page out of the box, but that's not really what I'm looking for.)

I'm tempted to build my own software, likely via my company, Good Enough. After all I want a website with pages and blog entries and photo blog entries and link blog sections and consumption diaries and a text box on the internet to update it all and everything. Thing is I could build this just so, but how do I enable other folks to take that and make it their own? And there is a big lift to provide a way to let people take what they've made with them (exporting and such). (Truth be told the place I'd likely skimp is design/templating customization features. The software would basically be built for people envisioning something very close to what I'm envisioning. They could change colors and fonts and such, and maybe add some custom CSS.)

At the moment it's all quite overwhelming to consider. I probably should dig into Micro.blog+Hugo and see if there is a way to not only customize my theme, but create an area special for photo blogging and the other unique things I'd like to do. Or just build my own personal software in Ruby on Rails to do my unique thing.