Big Photos on Blogger

As you can see below, I've figured out how to put big photos onto my blog. This photo was actually taken by my wife on our little point and click, but I thought I'd put it in anyway to show how ridiculous I am. Yes that's my twenty-two day old daughter hanging from my neck in a sling while I try to figure out how to adjust the apertaure on my camera.

Okay, here's how you do it (the big photos not the sling or the apertaure).

• First, you've got to download a new template. The problem with the Blogger templates is that the posting width is very narrow. You want to find a template that has a wide post column. I found some free templates prepared especially for photo blogs at http://www.ourblogtemplates.com/. I'm not sure I'm in love with this new template, so I may keep shopping, but it will do for now. Oh, and one drawback on choosing a new template, some of them, like the one I am currently using, doesn't make it easy for you to have your profile accessable to your blog guests (there's probably a way to get it in there, but it's too late tonight for me to figure it out). So, if you're really concerned that people know your favorite books, movies, and your "sign" a new template may not be the thing for you. Whatever site you download the new template from should have instructions on how to incorporate it in to blogger. It is actually pretty easy. Here are the instructions I followed: (1) download template and save it on your computer, (2) in blogger, go to Layout > Template > Edit HTML page, (3) choose the file you downloaded from the "Browse" button and then press the "Upload" button, (4) when it asks you to delete widget say yes (this is where you lose your profile and other fancy things you may have on the side of your current blog), and (5) view (and clean up) your new blog.
• Second, store your photos in an online image hosting service. I uploaded my images on to http://www.photobucket.com/. I think http://www.flickr.com/ works as well, but I have never tried it. Both sites are free. Photobucket appears to have image editing software that may even be more robust than Picasa. I haven't had time to use it very much, but it looked like there was a lot of stuff there.
• Third, copy the information in the "HTML for websites and blogs." It gives you full size and and thumbnail options. Go with the full size since that is the whole point of this exercise.
• Fourth, in the Blogger Create Post panel, click the "Edit HTML" in the text Editor and Paste in the HTML you copied from Photobucket or Flickr.
• Fifth, these next two steps will be easier if you have some experience with HTML. In order to keep your photo from being too big, you want to go in an set the width. You do this by going to the HTML you pasted in toward the end of all the computer gibberish but before the final ">" type "width="700px". That will tell the computer how many pixels wide you want the image displayed. You can set the height as well, but that may mess up the proportions, so best just do to width.
• Sixth, to prevent the image from hanging off to one side or the other, you want to tell the computer to center the image. You do this by finding the very first "<" and right before that type: "<" then the word "center" then another one of these ">". Then find the very last ">" and right after that type < /center >, only don't put in any spaces. (Sorry about all the "type this, then this, then another one of these," and "leave out the spaces" nonsense, I'm just not smart enough to show you how to do it without the computer interpreting it as actual HTML code.)

  Ta da. There you have it. Not that hard really. May require some additional tweaking after the fact, but at least we're getting closer. Enough blog business. Let's get back to photography.