Thursday, June 5, 2008

Check Out a Cool Advocate Photoblog!

By sheer Stamford Talk karma, the same karma that put me in a situation to repeatedly pretend to ignore Robert DeNiro as he rolled a wheelie suitcase toward me, I discovered a fantastic photoblog by the Stamford Advocate photographers.

This beautiful shot by Chris Preovolos grabbed my attention. The sun and color of the building make it look like it could be in the Caribbean, but it's from Stamford's Great American Clean-Up Day last weekend. The photoblog is great because you get the stories behind the photos with comments from the photogs. Hell yeah. Anytime talented people want to show me their work for free, I'm all over it. No, not just for free; they are making it easy for me. I appreciate that. In this internet age, the word "easy" is key. There is so much vying for our attention, and we're all busy. The photoblog is a simple, straightforward, well-organized site.

There is also a multimedia section where you can see slide shows, some with voice overs. Kick ass, Advocate! Yes! Finally you are giving me something cool that does not disappear from the face of the world after two weeks, like your articles- oh yeah. I've got a big post planned on that bitter subject.

It looks like the blog has only been up since January. That's pretty young for a blog, so I'm not going to complain about how the Advocate should have publicized it better. Heck, maybe there is a big logo on the Stamford Advocate home page that says, "CLICK HERE FOR THE ADVOCATE PHOTOBLOG," but a) I read so fast on the internet that it's easy for me to miss things and b) the big animated "Cancer" logo from the first week of the new Advocate website really turned me off and took a toll on my patience. However, a quick browse of the site shows no sign of "link here for awesome photos of your city that provide a new perspective on the people and places you take for granted and are too rushed to notice."

Advocate, we love you, but step it up! Give us good stuff, make it easily accessible online, and don’t make your articles go away after two weeks. We all hate that and talk about you behind your back for it.

1 comment:

irenesbooks said...

The Photo Blog is great, but the new online Advocate still turns me off.

They also discontinued their weekly newsletters, I loved the food/wine newsletter.