Expanding The LovinDublin Community With Photos

Through my early years as a chef in college, high end restaurants and in books I was always taught that people eat with their eyes. You can make food tasty as you want but it has to look amazing to get people really wetting their pants with excitement. When I first started this site I vowed it would be driven by photos. I write a bit but largely most people come here to drool over the lovely pictures as they seek out something to eat in the capital. The first stage was myself and Nicola (our wonderful community manager) adding the photos ourselves but the time has come to broaden what we do and turn to the wonderful community that is starting to form here naturally.

A Monthly Prize

To help get things started I wanted to offer up a really lovely prize to help encourage people to share photos and engage with other foodies in Dublin. At the end of every month (starting January) we'll be picking the 5 people who have interacted with the community the most to go out for dinner. We'll be hitting a high end Dublin restaurant and I'll be paying for it. We'll eat great food, drink wine and talk about food and get to know each other. All you have to do to be in with a chance of coming along is share some great photos. There are a number of ways to share photos...

Comments

Readers have started sharing photos already in the comments(good example here). All you have to do is click the little image symbol in the comments and you can upload an image directly from your computer or your phone. Loads of people are cooking the recipes on the site these days and nothing makes us happier than to see how you got on. Start sharing them in the comments of that recipe would be great especially as it helps others to gain the confidence to give it all a bash. In the very same way you can add photos to restaurant reviews. I'm only one person reviewing the place so to add a little balance having as many photos and reviews of your own there will only help others make an informed opinion on eating there. The more photos of different dishes we have on posts the better.

#LovinDublin

People are already using the hashtag but if you are posting photos on either Twitter or Instagram it would be great if you could use the hashtag. It helps people surf through all the photos and helps us surface the best ones to feature here on the site.

Cooked those spuds from LovinDublin / @niallharbison with a few customisations... https://t.co/tQOXvF181n

— Seán Earley (@seanearley) January 12, 2014

Restaurants

As you know we are building a huge visual search engine for Dublin restaurants. If you are a Dublin restaurant and have not been featured there please get in touch with nicola@lovindublin.com and we will get you added to the page. We even have a photographer who can help take some stunning images for you. The more restaurants and photos we have the better the service will be.

Instagram

We've just kicked off our presence on the photo sharing site and we'd love too see you engage with us there. We'll be sharing great food photos from around the city and would love to include yours as well. Tag us or share photos you think would work well in front of an audience of Dublin foodies. We are here.

Community Driven Site

2013 was very much about building up the content ourselves and having a great place for Dublin foodies to hang out. 2014 is all about you and getting everybody to feel a part of the site. It will only ever be so powerful with us adding photos but with Dubliners out there snapping pics all over the place and improving the reviews that are there the site will become even more useful. You might even win a bit of free grub and a night on the booze for your troubles. Lash up photos new and old as soon as you want. Can't wait to see them.