Tryst with the Shutter Bug

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: 

Its loveliness increases; it will never 

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep 

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep 

The blog ‘Tryst with the Shutter Bug’ somehow reminded me of the poem by Keats. The blogger Ramakant Pradhan has captured many of the things of beauty he has seen on his travels and brings them to our computer screens in the comfort of our homes and offices through his blog.

The best feature of his blog I feel are the striking photographs. Sometimes one wonders if photography is an art like painting. After all it is the gadget that captures the pictures and it  only captures scenes as is without any creative input. So where is the art here? But it is when you see the works of true masters with the camera and compare their works with the regular photographer, you get the answer to this question. Nature chooses certain special areas in space to bestow with ethereal beauty at certain moments of time. The art lies in recognizing these moments and capturing them for eternity on the shutter bug before it passes away. And this blogger has done a great job at that.

Most photo blogs just put up pictures without an accompanying commentary. In these cases one tends to pass by with a quick glance. A well written commentary enhances the effect of a photograph or painting and retains the visitor’s attention for a longer duration. This blogger has managed that excellently. The writing is very coherent and flows nicely along with the pictures in most cases. It is not sketchy and unrelated to the picture as it is in many travel blogs. The writing flows seamlessly along with the pictures making it effortless for the reader to switch between picture and text. It is said that a good artist know when to stop. The blogger here knows that very well. He manages to maintain an optimal number of pictures in a blog post and does not fall prey to the temptation of posting too many pictures from a trip on to the blog.

Moving on other aspects, the name of the blog is appropriate but a bit difficult for a top of the mind recall. At least to me it sounds quite a mouthful and feels a bit difficult to remember. The catch line ‘A journey as seen through the eyes of my lens’ is not especially catchy as such. Nevertheless it clearly brings out the mission of the blog very well. The background is well chosen. Dark backgrounds enhance pictures well and the simplicity ensures the visitor’s attention is not distracted from the pictures and writing.

As I suggest in most of my reviews, here too I see lot of scope for improvement in the navigability. As of now there is no provision to navigate by themes such as geographies, type of travel destination etc. I think it will be good to classify posts by themes and give an option to navigate either through labels or even better by creating static pages with hyperlinks. Possibly there are gadgets that can achieve better results than these two ideas. But gadgets are not my area of specialty. In terms of widgets, I find any kind of widget related to traffic adding no value to the visitor. My personal view is that the blogger should track the traffic separately behind the scenes using Google analytics rather than burdening the visitor with all this unnecessary information. The widget that I like is of course the random post widget. Last but not the least, the interaction is pretty decent.

In terms of areas that can still improve, the blogger has shown reasonable literary potential. So I would recommend working further on these skills and weave more poetry, personal reflections and local myths to his narratives to make it even more enchanting. One more thing that can be explored is collaborating with other travel bloggers to blog on a common platform. Though it takes away some amount of freedom from individual bloggers, it will ensure more content at one place making things easier for readers.

In the final analysis, it is definitely a best in class blog in the travel/photography genre. Find below a selection of posts handpicked by the blogger.

Inside the Basilica !!!

For whom the bell tolls

Visit to God's own country Kerala - Wayanad

Lot can happen over coffee

Old Man by the Sea