Why Do I Blog? - Patricia Andjelkovic

We are very fortunate at ISB to have a colleague that has scaled the blogging world to heights many of us cannot imagine.  Many have stumbled across Pat's Yankee in Belgrade blog and benefited from the useful insights and superb photography of this city we call home.  I know that some of her followers are curious friends and family of international staff at ISB.  For them and many more, A Yankee in Belgrade wonderfully reveals this city and country's vibrancy, beauty, nuances, and flavors in ways we cannot.  Pat's blog was in fact a thrilling introduction to life in Belgrade when we discovered it over two years ago after signing on to join this great team. Thanks, Pat.

Jennie and I asked Pat to be a guest contributor on our blogs and answer the following question: Why do I blog? Her response serves to underscore the vast possibilities blogging brings to student and teacher learning. If you have discovered the advantages blogging brings to your life - personally or professionally - please let us know and consider contributing a feature post too.

WHY DO I BLOG?  LET ME COUNT THE WAYS…

I’ve been doing my photoblog, Yankee-in-Belgrade (http://yankee-in-belgrade.blogspot.com) for over two years now.  I’ve been into photography since the mid-seventies, but up until I reluctantly (but now happily) went digital in 2005, I hadn’t been able to share my photos with the big, wide world, other than the occasional exhibit here and there.  While doing an online search of sites with some non-standard photos of Paris for a friend who was traveling there, I came across Paris Daily Photo, the blog that became a website that spawned other City Daily Photo blogs (www.citydailyphoto.com).  “Why not join?” said I to my dog, Bibi, who became my ‘nom de plume’ and avatar (I didn’t know what the latter was either back then….).  Using Bibi’s photo assured me some degree of anonymity, but would you believe that I have had people (2!) recognize her when I’m out walking?!  I made the decision to create a blog and did so in less than 10 minutes….knowing absolutely nothing.  ‘It’s free and easy,’ claims Blogspot.com and it is.  I set up a template, added a header photo, uploaded my first photo with a short comment, and voilà,I was a photoblogger.  Comments came slowly, but gradually increased as I visited others’ blogs.

Some of us blog to stay connected with family and friends, but I created my blog for several reasons, which are, in no particular order:

--to break stereotypes about Serbia/Serbs; to show a side of Belgrade and Serbia you don’t necessarily find on the Internet and from my long-term expat point of view,  to learn about other photobloggers’ cities; and to improve my photography skills by taking more photos and sharing photo tips with others.  There isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t learn something through my blog, either from someone’s comment about my post or by visiting their posts.  I’ve met blogger buddies in person in New York City, Seattle, Warsaw, and Belgrade, and look forward to meeting others on subsequent trips. I’ve written to photobloggers from other cities for info about their cities and have always gotten an answer.  What I enjoy most is when I receive an email from someone, usually a Serb in the diaspora, who requests a photo of some place or something dear to them.  Insofar as possible, I always fulfill their wish.  By the time you read this, I’ll have met a blogger fan from Romania who will be visiting Belgrade, and soon another who wanted info on how to import her dog to Serbia!  Somehow I even got a comment from the author of Walk Two Moons (and other books), Sharon Creech, who stumbled somehow upon my blog.  My son even told me that a colleague from the US wrote to him about ‘this great blog on Serbia’….ha.  From comments and visiting, I confirmed my belief that people are indeed all more alike than different. 

The fun side of blogging, in my case, photoblogging, is that Yankee-in-Belgrade has opened up new doors for me.  Over a year ago I was contacted by a publisher who had seen my photos and wanted me to do a two-page quarterly layout for Inspire, the Hyatt Regency magazine.  I still do this, and it’s also is also good for the occasional cocktail party….  Ditto for a local newspaper, from time to time. Sometimes other bloggers ask permission to use my photos either on their blog, and that’s fine with me, as long as they link back.

More than anything, though, I have found photoblogging to be just plain fun. Now even more than before I carry my camera all the time, lest I miss something, like the proverbial fisherman’s ‘one that got away.’