Self-Editing

For my last outfit post I took ... *counts* .... 92 photos.  Partly cos the multishot setting on my camera makes life easy, partly because I like lots of choice.  Whilst this was a rarity in one sense because I actually liked most of the photos, it was pretty typical of the number of photos I take per post.  Editing them into the "hmm, possible" and "hideous, delete, DELETE" piles doesn't take that long and is a natural part of the process as far as I'm concerned.  Most of you are probably the same.  After all, no-one likes to post pictures where they look like a complete horror.  So that's understandable, but where do you draw the line on self-editing?

I can't warm to blogs where everything is portrayed as so cool and impersonal and so achingly stylish and entirely lacking in humour or warmth that you just want to slap the people concerned.  I can't be the only one that looks at some fashion blogs and thinks "Do you really dress like that day in, day out?  How the hell do you afford it? Don't you ever get bored and want to slob round in pj's?".  Please tell me it's not just me that scrolls through lifestyle and interior decoration blogs and mentally screams "Feck off with your endless cupcakes and quirky retro stylings.  Why is your house so tidy? Where is the MESS? And how do you enjoy life surrounded by so many perfectly plumped cushions??!"

Maybe they do.  Maybe some people really are that cool and perfect.  Maybe they like it that way.  More likely, it's filtered through their blog via a certain level of self editing.  Beauty bloggers don't show the photos where they've got the angles wrong and you can see RIGHT up their nose.  Craft bloggers don't usually show the ones where they've monumentally arsed up and sewn their latest project to their trouser leg by accident.  Home bloggers don't take arty shots of cat sick or the dust on their shelves.  Fashion bloggers don't tend to show the photos where they've fallen over trying to achieve a cool pose and are flashing their knickers. Well this one does...kinda...

No actual knicker flashing but behold the look of sheer WTF-ery on my face as I prepare to wobble off my wedges and plummet to my right

I've discussed the concept of "blogworthy" outfits before. I don't inflict my jeans and work fleece outfits on you as I don't expect anyone would be interested.  But I don't dress up just to take blog photos and then go and put something else on for my day to day life either.  In plain photo terms, my self editing has a simple purpose - to try and pick the outfit photos where the clothes look best and I don't look hideous.  It's a constant surprise to me that an angle or two of difference in the way you face the camera can make you look two sizes bigger or instantly give you a massive double chin.

Looking beyond that to words and content, I don't try to paint my life as something it's not. I'm not interested in coming across as Little Miss Perfect Fashion Blogger, complete with artfully styled shoots and lashings of kooky clothing and accessories, because that's not who I am as a person.  It's my blog, done my way, and I'm just a normal person with a normal job (albeit in quite an unusual location) who likes frocks and shoes and books and so on. 

I may post more about the fun outfits and the fun things, but that's just because they're more interesting and no-one really wants to hear me beef on about feeling knackered or doing the ironing.  Ha, who am I trying to kid?  I don't DO the ironing.  That blog post is never gonna happen.  But do you get to know the real me from what I write?  I'd certainly hope so.  Not everything - I like to retain some mystique after all - but I'd like to think that if you met me in real life you wouldn't be totally surprised.

  My self editing is mostly done in terms of interest levels.  There aren't any topics that are really off limits, other than the specifics of my job and even that's not because it's dull, but because I don't want to go into huge detail online about it.  Now I know "interest levels" is a self-imposed set of criteria - after all, I don't know exactly what each and every one of my readers want to see on here.  But at a basic level, if it doesn't interest me, it won't appear on this blog.  This is one of my hobbies and I don't have the spare time to waste writing about stuff that I find dull.  If I know it doesn't massively interest most of you then I ration those posts out a bit.  For example, the comments and page views go right down for my horsey posts, so I won't do more than a couple of those a year.  Enough to satisfy me cos it's something I want to write about and photograph, not enough to bore the pants off you lot.  

Generally I aim to make this little part of the internet somewhere fun and colourful and a slice of my life.  That's just me though.  Do you work on a similar principle?  Are there any topics that are off limits for you?  Is blog you the real you?