  The importance of Born terms and resonance exchange for eta and eta-prime
photoproduction off both the proton and neutron within U(3) baryon chiral
perturbation theory is investigated. Low-lying resonances such as the vector
mesons and J^P= 1/2^+, 1/2^- baryon resonances are included explicitly and
their contributions together with the Born terms are calculated. The coupling
constants of the resonances are determined from strong and radiative decays. We
obtain reasonable agreement with experimental data near threshold.
