Blogs for Beginners – My Daily Reads

Now that you know how to start following someone’s blog, all you need is someone to follow! I’ve compiled some of the blog’s that I check daily, and which cover a variety of different topics!

As always, click on photos to see them larger

Being an entomologist, I usually start off with some new insect tidbits:

Myrmecos Blog – In my opinion, one of the greatest insect photographers on the internet right now, and just so happens he’s a taxonomist as well! Alex Wild provides plenty of ant-related taxonomic news fully illustrated with fantastic photos! (Update – Alex just migrated to the world of ScienceBlogs, make sure to check your bookmarks! Congrats Alex!)

Beetles in the Bush – Calling Ted McRae a tiger beetle enthusiast is understating his vast knowledge and fantastic photos! Ted provides excellent info that I’ve not found elsewhere, usually direct from the latest research papers yet explained in a way that everyone can enjoy. Join him as he documents as many tiger beetles (and buprestids, and cerambycids, and pretty well all the other beetles out there) as he can find. As an added bonus, Ted keeps an extremely extensive list of nature blogs that he vets regularly, so check in and see where else to look!

Fall To Climb – TGIQ (The Geek In Question as she’s known digitally) is an extremely enthusiastic Canadian entomology grad student who loves to share her naturalist skills with the world. Check in with her for some light-hearted yet informative insect info!

Although not insect related, Female Science Professor provides a really informative look into the life of academia, with posts about departmental politics, dealing with grad students/advisors, getting published, and a whole suite of topics that I file away for the future. A must read for graduate students considering a career in academia!

Work isn’t everything in life (even if it’s a ton of fun) so I check into the blogs of a lot of photographers to get inspiration and tips:

Moose Peterson – Amazing wildlife photographer, years and years of photography business experience and thousands of photos make Moose one of my favourite blogs to check, and I always seem to learn something new or get invigorated to take my camera out and play.

Glenn Bartley – Easily the best up and coming bird photographer in Canada, Glenn has some of the most beautiful bird images, and is just starting to get his blog up and running to showcase some of his work.

David duChemin (PixelatedImage Blog) – Another Canadian, David is a travel photographer with a big heart and lots of wisdom to share! Check in here if you’re in need of some encouraging words to get you pumped for your next photo!

Finally, learning the skills to get the most out of your camera and photos comes in handy for both work and play, and these blogs have all the info you need!

Scott Kelby – The king of Photoshop and Photoshop educators, anything you ever need to know about photo editing you can learn from Scott and his gang of tech-centric cronies! A must read in my book!

Matt Kloskowski (Lightroom Killer Tips) – I use Lightroom for all of my photo management, most of my editing, and am in the process of creating my portfolio website with it. Matt knows his stuff and you’ll love the time-saving tips he shares, not to mention his long list of presets to make your editing easier!

Joe McNally – The god of speedlights, Joe is a National Geographic photographer who does a lot of portrait and photojournalist work, and can make anyone look like a million bucks with a speed light and some laughs. His tips are great, especially since insect macro photography is just portrait work on a tiny scale!

So there you go, a bunch of new blogs to check out on rainy spring days! Check back tomorrow for a look into some of the mega-blog-resources where you can dive in and find blogs on almost any topic!

BONUS BLOG (sort of):

PhD Comics – Hilarious web comic that really nails life as a grad student! Seriously, its scary how much this comic has reflected my life and our lab…