This post’s for bloggers. You can skip it if you’re looking for pictures of minifigs or mecha or space ships or castles.

Sean’s LEGO Bloggers’ Code proposal last month got me thinking about other ways we LEGO bloggers can cooperate more, helping to create more of a network of blogs that compliment each other.

In addition to linking back and forth, one way I think we can create this network — something that adds up to more than the sum of its parts — is through tagging.

Tagging is a lot like the art of indexing a book. An index isn’t just all the words in the book listed alphabetically — that’s a concordance, and search engines already do this (though they call their process “indexing,” just to confuse you). A human indexer evaluates information and assigns keywords that a reader might use when trying to find that information. These keywords might not appear in the content itself. Similarly, the author of a blog post assigns tags based on how they want their information to be found. For example, I don’t always use the word “LEGO” in my posts, but I want people looking for information about LEGO to find my posts.

Since several of us are now using Technorati tags to categorize our posts, I thought it might be time to see if ways we could standardize our the way we use tags. Standardization will help our readers find related information across all of our blogs. For those of you who aren’t using tags yet, I’ve found that people really are using Technorati to find information on blogs; I get a fair number of referrals from Technorati searches, and the added keywords get picked up by Google, MSN, and Yahoo!. (And let’s just admit it’s all about readers, because otherwise, what’s the point?)

As I copied and pasted tag sets from one post to another, I’ve developed a standard of my own that I may as well share with you. Each string of tags at the end of my posts includes the following information:

I did a little experiment a couple weeks back because I wasn’t satisfied with the quality of my LEGO photography. In the process, I discovered that I have very specific ideas about what makes for good LEGO photography and Brickshelf posting practices. This is pretty long, so skip it if you’re not interested.

When you take pictures of your LEGO creations (or MOCs):

• Use the right amount of light. It’s hard to see poorly lit MOCs, and over-lit MOCs are washed out and lack contrast.
• Focus. If you accidentally take an unfocused picture, take it again before you upload it.
• Unless you’re trying to be especially artistic, fill as much of the frame as you can with your MOC.

When you post your LEGO creations to Brickshelf:

• Size down your dang pictures! There’s nothing more annoying than clicking a thumbnail and then getting about one eighth of the picture on your screen. Use the software that came with your digital camera, or iPhoto, or Adobe Photoshop, or The GIMP — something! — to output your pictures no bigger than 1024×768 pixels. (I like 425×318 for my minifig pictures because they fit nicely in this Blogger template.) If you want to provide high-resolution pictures of your MOCs, put them in a sub-folder.
• Save your pictures in a compressed image format. Bitmaps (.bmp files) are uncompressed, and are a waste of bandwidth. Save your pictures in GIF, JPEG, PNG, or another “Web-friendly” format.
• Give your files meaningful names. I know your camera might use something cryptic like DSC10416.JPG for its file names, but change them to something that tells your viewers what the picture shows, like spaceship_front.jpg or joevig_party.gif.
• Control the order that pictures appear in your gallery by putting letters or numbers at the beginning of your file names. Numbers sort before letters, so if you want to use a specific picture for the folder thumbnail, you could use something like 00_spaceship_front.jpg. (I learned a cool trick from Antony Lau recently. Instead of naming new files you add to a folder by counting up, start with a number like 999 and count down! The new things you add will always appear as your folder thumbnail.)
• Add a description and folder keywords when you create your folders. A description and keywords make it easy for other Brickshelf users to find your MOCs.

I’m sure I’ve missed a few things, so feel free to add your own thoughts by posting comments. :-)

One thing I really like about Sugegasa’s blog is that he presents practical tips on LEGO-related issues ranging from organization to photography. About a month ago, he posted a couple pictures of how he takes pictures of his LEGO creations. What I noticed immediately is that he uses a fluorescent desk lamp to illuminate the creations.

Inspired by Sugegasa, I decided to try my own LEGO photography experiments.

Until recently, I’ve always tried to take my minifig pictures in sunlight. Here’s my Cloud Strife minifigure (from the PS2 game Kingdom Hearts), taken in full sunlight:

Here’s the setup I used last summer, on the back deck at our old house (nice flowers, huh?):

Those are the top of banker’s boxes left over from moving. Sunlight obviously provides fantastic lighting, but living here in Seattle, it’s cloudy more than 200 days a year, and right now we’re nearing a record for consecutive days of rain (the record is 33, and as of January 14, we stand at 27 days). Partial clouds provide great diffused light, but I just can’t rely on weather to take my pictures.

After Christmas, my wife suggested I go ahead and spend the $100 for one of those “Studio in a Box” light box kits. The idea is great. It comes with two small but powerful lights, a camera stand, a reversible backdrop (blue and dark grey), and the light box itself. According to the instructions, you’re supposed to place the lights on the outside of the box to provide diffused light.

Here’s the result following the instructions to the letter:

My camera flash obviously went off, and it totally washed out the picture.

I manually turned off the flash and tried again:

The diffused light is far too dark and way too yellow.

I tried lighting Cloud directly, with the flash turned on:

Again, the flash washes out the picture.

Here’s direct lighting, without the flash:

That’s better, but I don’t like the backdrop color choices, and I’m not using the light box, so what’s the point of the kit? I returned it for a refund and got depressed.

Then I remembered Sugegasa’s post that showed the fluorescent desk lamp he used, so my wife and I looked around for a fluorescent desk lamp. Lighting stores sold full-spectrum lamps for $100, but that didn’t seem worth it. Target had a couple choices for under $40, but they weren’t in stock.

My wife saw a “natural light” desk lamp on sale for $25 at Bartell Drugs (a local pharmacy chain), and there was much rejoicing! She picked it up for me on Friday, and said it was actually on sale for $20 instead of $25. Cool! (For those of you here in Washington, the sale runs through tomorrow, if you’re interested.)

Without any additional light sources, here’s the result:

Hurray! Check out the Brickshelf gallery for higher-resolution versions of each of the pictures I’ve featured above.

Overall, I still prefer sunlight, but the “natural” or full-spectrum desk lamp provides a great result for a very good price. If you want to improve your LEGO photography, spending $20-$30 on decent lighting seems well worth it. (Of course, you might need something significantly bigger to take pictures of your four-foot-wide castle!)