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Last month, I was invited to attend the Social Arab Web, 2nd Arab Bloggers Meeting in Beirut. The event was organized by The Heinrich Böll Foundation and Global Voices Online, with support from HIVOS and the Open Society Institute .

Around 80 Arab bloggers came together to exchange their knowledge and express their opinions about the trending topics in the Arab blogsphere. The event lasted for 5 days and covered many activites including different types of presentations, workshops and discussions.

I ran one of the workshops in which I talked about using photography in blogs and provided the participants with few simple tips that could improve the quality of their photos. The main message I wanted to deliver in my workshop was that ‘images play an important role in blogs; therefore, they could either advance the blog or negatively affect it. At the same time, you don’t need to be a professional photographer in order to shoot excellent photos for your blog. Anyone who follows few simple steps while taking pictures; he/she can improve the quality of their photos.’

The points I highlighted quickly in the workshop were: simplicity, light, zoom, focus, quality and composition – the rule of third.

I am quite happy with that workshop since I had the chance to talk about photography from a different perspective. The perspective of blogging which I find somehow a little bit different from the ‘art’ perspective. Just a few years ago, people in my country used to reject thinking of photography as an ‘art’ field! Although few people recently started to accept the idea of using /applying photography in different areas, the majority still look at ‘photography’ as a career that most of the time is handed over by the father to his children and grandchildren or as a profession that someone can learn rather than as an amazing field of art that could be explored and exhibited.

Now and after the wide spread of digital cameras, I am sure that the use of ‘photography’ will keep changing and everyday we may hear about a new interesting concept and use of ‘photography’.