Saturday, January 01, 2005

About Me

Welcome to my photoblog, you know, a web log (blog) with photos. In early 2004, I barely know what a blog was, much less a photoblog. In February of that year, Yahoo published a reference to a site called SensitiveLight, a photoblog by Graham Jeffery of England. I enjoyed his pictures and was inspired to improve my photographic skills. At the same time I was exploring the world of photoblogs through a site called PhotoBlogs.org. I decided to create my own photoblog, so I searched for a good, inexpensive way to post my pictures. The Blogger service from Google worked ok and the price was right (free). I post a picture about once a week, more or less. Since the site started in early 2005, I think (and hope you’ll agree) that my skills have improved.

Why Chicken Bog? Most photoblogs have clever or catchy names like JinkyArt or PanHandlin’. I wanted a distinctive name that was somehow linked to my area of the world. Chicken Bog is dish from the lowcountry of South Carolina and its one of my favorite foods. Its made of chicken, rice, country sausage, and lots of black pepper. There is even a local festival in Loris, SC called The BogOff . Here’s a recipe.

I am not the only one who likes Chicken Bog as a URL. There is a .com from Myrtle Beach and .net from Florence, but the one to bookmark is http://chickenbog.us/. It’ll take you to the blogger site http://chickenbog.blogspot.com/. If you use an RSS reader, the address is: http://chickenbog.blogspot.com/atom.xml.

When I was growing up, I took pictures with the family camera: a Brownie, an Instamatic, and a pocket camera. Somewhere in there, I actually developed some black & white prints from the Brownie. I’ve had several 35mm point & shoots. Some of the early shots on this site were taken with an Olympus C-3040 and now I have graduated to a Nikon D70. I use PhotoShop Elements for most of the editing. Most of the time, the photo I post is pretty much the photo I took. I’ll usually crop some, maybe tweak the contrast or the colors, but I rarely change anything else.

As for me, I grew up in a small town close to Myrtle Beach. I am a programmer / project manager / functional analyst / geek for a large multinational company here in upstate South Carolina. Photography is a nice blend of techy & artsy.

If you have a comment about something you’ve read here or a picture on the site, if you have a suggestion to improve the site or my pictures, please send me a note at Joey at ChickenBog dot US.