I’ve neglected my blog for the last month or so, not because I have no content or dislike blogging, but because I’ve been busy building something I’m very proud of – The Photo Brigade.

About the time I was drafting my Haiti blog post is when the idea of Photo Brigade came to me. There are hundreds of photographers like myself who keep a blog showcasing their latest and greatest work, but it’s just so dang complicated and time consuming to keep on top of them all. There are tools like Google Reader that allow me to subscribe to blogs and see new posts come through on a timeline, but I still have to filter through many uninteresting posts to get to the good ones.

Other questions remained: How do I find the amazing blogs to watch in the first place? Wouldn’t it be awesome if there was a single blog or website that featured the posts of freelancers like myself all around the world?

Well now there is: The Photo Brigade.

I first tested the concept by creating a Facebook Page called The Photo Brigade in which I simply linked to the work of photographers I enjoyed. Over the course of a few weeks I noticed that literally hundreds and hundreds of people began subscribing to the Photo Brigade feed by becoming a “fan” of the page and it was obvious to me that there was not only a desire, but also a need for a service like this.

At that point I began working with my web designer extraordinaire, Laia Prats, to develop the concept into an actual blog to do just that. The result was more than simply a blog, it became a community of photographers, editors, students, and photo lovers alike – all converging to one place to see the daily features of hard-working, freelance photographers from around the world.

I decided to exclusively feature the work of freelance photographers like myself for numerous reasons. For starters, it’s not a secret that the media industry has taken a huge hit with the turbulent economy and recession of the past few years, so not only have there been less and less jobs available, but also staff photographers have been getting laid-off by the truckload. Unless those photographers decide to choose an entirely new career path, their only choice is to become a freelancer on their own and their blogs are one of their greatest marketing tools. We freelancers have to be savvy businessmen (and women) and continuously keep our names at the top of our clients’ call sheets. No greater way to do that than by posting our latest work to our blogs.

But how do we get our blogs seen by the masses? As a blogger myself, I religiously keep track of the traffic and analytics my blog and website produces and wonder how I can grow that number. In my experience I’ve found the best way is by building my social network and filtering traffic through Twitter, Facebook, and other blogs, especially if those referring outlets have a large following. Simply put, as my network has grown, my traffic has grown – thus my bottom line has grown as a result. It would stand to reason that if freelancers as a whole were to build a large collective social network, we’d all benefit by the added traffic and awareness to our websites, and as a result we’d get more work and most importantly, some recognition. This is the model behind The Photo Brigade.

I took the concept one step further by creating the first three (of hopefully many more) regional Photo Brigade blogs: Ohio, Missouri, and Rochester. The concept is the same as the main Photo Brigade blog, to use social media to promote the work of the individual photographers we feature, but each regional branch will be focusing on promoting specifically the work and blogs of students, alumni, and faculty from each respective university. You can read more about the regional blogs in a blog post I wrote on Photo Brigade titled “Ohio, Missouri & Rochester, oh my!”

There are more features we’ll be rolling out that will prove to be an amazing resource for photographers and editors, so stay tuned for them!

I sincerely hope you support my effort of promoting the talented photographers we feature by bookmarking The Photo Brigade and also by following us on Twitter, becoming a fan on Facebook, simply spreading the gospel, and most importantly by submitting your work!