SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- You don't know Michael Zhang, but do a little pointing and clicking and you'll find out he's a student at Davis Senior High School in Sacramento, plays tennis and bought an ostrich burger and chips for $6 two months ago.

It's all there for the world to see on this 17-year-old's photoblog, where he chronicles everything, including the first time he ate a Quiznos sandwich.

"Quiznos is awesome. Very awesome. Awesome and good," he wrote.

Zhang is part of the future of Web logging, going beyond simply sharing thoughts in cyberspace to allow strangers a very visual look into his private life.

He sometimes takes 100 photos in a day, ranging from shots of his friends to pictures of food. He picks up to 20 and uploads them daily to his blog, an online diary of sorts (http://blog.michaelzhang.com).

Most blogs today include some photography, said Caterina Fake, co-founder of Flickr, an online photo-sharing community launched last year and growing by 30 percent a month.

Online with ease

Since the end of 2003, it has become easier to put photos online because Internet connections are faster, digital cameras cheaper and camera phones are readily available.

"It's taking photography to a whole new level," said Larry Pryor, an associate professor of journalism at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication. "Every person can be a photojournalist."

Although Zhang won't take pictures of the exterior of his home and rarely posts photographs of his parents, no one else is spared from his shutter. There are photos of store clerks, teachers, classmates and paramedics. There are scenes from church services, concerts, movies and restaurants.

He doesn't ask permission to take anyone's photo and, surprisingly, most people don't ask why he's taking their picture. "Some people give me looks and they think I'm weird," he said.

Making a mark

Andrew DeVigal, who teaches online journalism at San Francisco State University, sees Zhang's Web site as a product of the human desire to leave a mark on the world.

"In some ways, it's an opportunity to say, `Hey, here I am and I'm relevant,' regardless if anybody's listening," DeVigal said.

Zhang began taking photos about three years ago. He realized that while he documented trips to China or amusement parks, routine days seemed to blur together. He decided to ingrain those into his memory by regularly shooting candid shots, organizing them by date and posting them on the Web site.

Days "kind of disappeared and faded from my memory," recalled Zhang, who will be attending the University of California at Davis this fall. "But now I can remember them clearly because all of them have a title and pictures."

Since Dec. 16, when he put his first post on the blog, Zhang has been chronicling what he eats, whom he sees and pretty much everything else he does.

He's never far from his digital camera, which weighs 7.1 ounces.

Every once in a while, Zhang will get home and realize he has forgotten to take pictures. So he'll run around the house, looking for something interesting to shoot or make his younger brother practice slam dunks.

"It's really interesting to look back on any day and remember what you did that day, to have memories in the future to share," Zhang said.

Although Zhang doesn't keep track of how many people visit his site, comments are mainly posted by friends and every once in a while by a stranger.

A daily visitor to the photoblog is Zhang's mother, Joy Tian, who doesn't have to ask her son how his day went. For the most part, the blog reaffirms what she already knows about her son: He's a good kid surrounded by good friends.

"He really enjoys life," said Tian, who works as research associate at the University of California at Davis. "That's what I'm really proud of."