make your living through www

A year ago, David Hobby created a blog on off- camera- lighting - technically like ours, running on Google's Blogger - but that's all about the similarities. His site is called the strobist, and he started out by a-simple-to-him/pro-to-us lighting stuff called lighting 101, and on assigment - light like a pro sharing some of his basic techniques on taking photos with a flash unit(s) apart from the camera. Currently his running a lighting 102 a second grade to those who followed though the previous workshop. And this is all for free to any web user. The heart of the site has been sharing ideas on how to learn to light well, with minimum costs on equipment.

David is a professional photographer to a newspaper, and respectively his basic stuff has been found profound, inspiring and certainly worth reading by many, and within a year he has gathered base of over 100,000 readers, and a community of 11,000 (and counting) flickr members who post and view photos with lighting info - help and cheer one another. And this is all for free to all web user.

Besides photographers, the site got viewed by some suppliers too, and a couple of weeks ago David posted about taking a year off from his regular job, to live on the money his making through the site, and workshop/seminars his doing around the world - which too are boosted by his reputation as a skilled off-camera-flash guy.

don't know what you're thinking, but I find a story like this amazing. It's a real life example new ways the money flows with system that's practically free for all users. One makes his living solely on it- couple other's sell their stuff by the one's reputations (making them living partly on it) and people like me get to enjoy life better by inspiring hobby - all for free.

simply fascinating.

(to those into kids more than web2 money flows - The pic above is of olivia 7months old - she's gain some hair more since then:) )