Goodbye NomadicPursuits.com - hello JimNix.com!
What’s In A Name?
I started this blog about 10 years ago, give or take. I had just recently started photography, and “everyone was doing it”, so I started a blog as well. I had no idea what I was doing, only that I was starting to love photography and wanted to have a blog. It was what I was “supposed” to do. And truthfully, I have really enjoyed having a blog. It’s been awesome. And as I said in my previous post here, I am going to keep it, even though it is no longer something that I will post to every day/week. Additionally I am changing the look, feel and content around here to some degree. It’s a work in process, that is for sure.
Venice, Italy at sunset - wandering somewhere in a back canal
When I was formulating my idea for this blog all those years ago, I wanted to name it something that implied travel, but wasn’t specific to photography. You see, at the time I thought the blog would be about travel, photography and several other topics that I am/was interested in (books, maps, personal finance, inspirational quotes, working out, writing, poetry and more). I thought it would become sort of a digital representation of my interests, and I was excited to work on it and try and grow it.
In some ways, I envisioned it being what is now called a “lifestyle blog”, although I don’t believe such a thing was a thing back then. Maybe it was, I have no idea. But at the time, I could not predict the extent to which I was going to love photography, and dive into it head first. It was a new subject to me then, and I had very little experience with cameras, photography, editing and the like. It was like learning a new language. (And I am still learning.)
Of course naming a blog is hard, and although I settled on Nomadic Pursuits, I never really loved the name and obviously it does not just roll off the tongue. I always felt like I had to spell it out for people, and clarify what it meant, and all that sort of stuff. And although I was Jim Nix on all the social media sites, I didn’t think to just name my blog after me, because other than some friends and family, no one knew who I was.
Evening in London, England
And back then, I don’t remember people using their name for their blog or website name. I am sure some did, but I don’t recall that other than photographers using their first name and last name with “photography” or “photo” at the end. And as I said above, I never even considered that because I thought the site would be about more than photography.
In retrospect I realize I was trying to create a brand, even though I didn't realize that at the time. I guess “brand” is the right word. I’m not really sure, but it was some “entity” that I was crafting, to the extent I was capable of such a thing. It wasn’t about me, per se, but about my interests, and sharing them with anyone who showed up (though admittedly, not many people did).
When I started this blog I was fresh off meeting Trey Ratcliff here in Austin and learning about his blog (I met him through work). I saw his photos, and read his blog, and literally decided on the spot that this was what I wanted to do with my life. That’s how I got started.
The thing was, I basically just followed his lead and started trying to post a photo here every day. It was tough, and frankly a lot of the photos were crap. I had no background in photography, and of course no background in photo editing, so I was mostly just using iPhoto to drag the saturation to the right. Real smart, Jim. :-) Oh, and I knew nothing about trying to build an online presence via social media, SEO, blogging, etc. (And frankly, I still don’t know a lot about that stuff, I’m just sort of hacking my way as I go.) And even worse, I really had no idea what I WANTED to do. I had no plan, other than to just put out photos. So this sort of became a photography blog, because I found myself spending more and more time just on photography, and not the other interests that I initially envisioned including here on the site.
Just before sunrise in Prague - a stunningly beautiful city.
But as time passed I learned more about post-processing and got more comfortable with a few editing programs, and my photos improved. I kept trying to post nearly every day. But over time I realized I didn’t HAVE to post every day. I was just doing it that way because that is what Trey did, and many others as well, so it seemed like the thing to do. I was just following everyone else’s lead. It never occurred to me that having a blog means you can basically do whatever it is you want to do. There are no rules. And by the way, I wasn’t exactly getting a lot of traffic, so it’s not like people were waiting around for me to post a new photo. But regardless, I made it my mission and I did a fairly consistent job of adding things here.
And of course photography became more and more important to me as I learned more about it, and got deeper into the subject. I just sort of “fell in love” with the whole creative process around it.
One thing I started doing somewhat early was adding a lot of content to the blog that I thought people might be searching for. A lot of this was based on questions I would get. One question I got from time to time was about the best places in Austin for taking photos. So I made a list and populated it with my photos. This was just something that was done primarily so I didn’t have to write it each time I got an email about it, but over time it has become the most viewed page on my blog. I even wrote an ebook about it.
The Loop 360 Bridge here in Austin - an iconic symbol of the city and a great place for a sunset shoot!
I also got questions about tips, tricks and things you can do with various software products, because as I posted photos I sometimes would mention what I did to the photo. This led me to writing up reviews of these software products, which also became some of the more popular pages here on the blog (at least at the time). They are no longer popular though because they were all older products that have long since been upgraded/changed. And (perhaps obviously) I do all my product review/instruction on YouTube nowadays. That’s just a much better way to do it. So I quit writing software tutorials and reviews here, mostly because I know that I will never go back and rewrite it when a new version comes out, or the current version gets updates, or whatever. And in fact, I have deleted nearly all of them from this site.
And of course I had some positions in the corporate world that sent me to various places around the globe for work (I work in the technology business still to this day, and still enjoy it, and we travel a lot as a family on our holidays). This allowed me to take photos in whatever free time I had while traveling, which led me to creating more lists of the best places to take photos in X (insert city name here). If I went somewhere and learned enough about it, had enough photos, and saw enough to make a list - then I made a list. I now have 20+ of these lists on the blog. Some get a lot of views each month, some not so much. But they are there to help people just in case. And of course I captured a LOT of photos, making mistakes along the way and learning and growing my craft.
But all this time the name of this site just didn’t feel right. Sure, I got some views and still get decent traffic. But a few years ago I decided to purchase jimnix.com because I wanted to own my own name as a domain, just in case. I didn’t really have any plans for it, other than to make sure another Jim Nix out there in the world didn’t have it.
An evening shot from London, dragging the shutter to capture a passing bus.
So at first I had that domain point to my Facebook business page for the blog, but a couple of years ago I deleted that page. It was a waste of time and effort to maintain it. Then I had that domain point to my personal Facebook page, and then I had it point to my portfolio site on SmugMug. Eventually, a year or so ago, I decided to make it a secondary domain here, meaning that it would bring anyone who typed it in to this blog. I didn’t really advertise the name, but since it was my name I figured it may as well point to my blog.
And now here I sit, having decided to make jimnix.com the main domain for my blog, and to reduce NomadicPursuits.com to the secondary position. I think it just makes sense. Nomadic Pursuits is harder to spell and harder to remember, and there is absolutely nothing about it that really tells you who or what it is about. Of course, if you have never heard my name then using jimnix.com doesn’t tell you what this is about either, but it does tell you WHO it is about. And this blog is about me - any personal blog should be. And while I am nowhere near being a well-known name, there is some awareness of me in the broader photographic community and it just makes sense to convert the name of the blog to my name. It’s cleaner, simpler, and much easier to remember, methinks. Plus a lot of search traffic that ends up on my blog comes from those searching out my name.
So the other day I did the swap from NomadicPursuits.com to JimNix.com as the primary domain. Going forward, I am only going to use the JimNix.com domain and although I will keep the other one alive, I do not plan to mention it anywhere. So now I am trying to go through all my social media sites and update my blog listing to jimnix.com and thus far I think I got them all. :-)
Strasbourg, France
I want to be clear about one thing - this is not about ego to me. I am using my name for my blog because this is my site, and this is about my photography. I am just making it simple. I’m not really actively trying to drive a lot of traffic to this blog. What I am doing is simplifying the discovery process for those who want to follow my work, my photography, or my mad ramblings here on the blog.
During this process, I have also removed a lot of old content from the blog. I completely deleted all of my old software tutorials and reviews that were here. As I mentioned previously, these were all done a long time ago and the products have all long since been upgraded and changed. Going back in to rewrite a full tutorial is a MAJOR time commitment, and frankly I am just too lazy. Plus, they do not get nearly as many views as they would on YouTube. Plus YouTube is just much easier for me. I can make a tutorial or review and get it published all in the same day whereas writing out a long-form article about a product and including a bunch of screenshots can take several days. It’s a LOT of work, trust me.
And personally, I am a visual learner when it comes to this stuff, so making a video seems better to me anyways, and I suspect a lot of people would just much rather see it than read about it.
So that is it my friends. This was a long article, and I am sorry about that, but I do enjoy writing more than I remember, and it is sort of fun to put my thoughts on paper (or on the web, in this case).
I have more work to do around here in terms of simplification but I have been deleting old content at a rapid pace and will continue to refine this blog over time. I feel that a blog is a living creation, and as such it will continue to evolve over time. What will this blog eventually look like? I do not know, but I am keeping the main idea of simplification top of mind. There is a lot of content here already (I have been doing this for 10 years now) but my hope is to continue to refine and simplify the site so that those visiting will clearly and easily find what they are looking for. We will have to see how that shakes out.
Thanks for following along, I appreciate it.
Cannon Beach, Oregon - my favorite place in the US.
