Reading List: Techy Tips

For a while now I've been contemplating a move from Blogger to Wordpress and, as always, I've found making a pro/con list to be the most effective way to make the decision. Although this would be quite a big step for the blog, it got me thinking about all the little technical tips and tricks that bloggers (fashion or otherwise) use to get the best from their blogs.

So here are some of the blogs I've been reading this week, full of tips to get the best out your blog...

SVB - What have you done with my landscape, flooding the fields with this clone shape - For a style blog perhaps one of the most important factors is great photos. This post shows readers hour to get a hazy, vintage tinge to their pictures.

Pro Blogger - How Your About Page Can Make or Break Your Blog - a tad intimidating as a headline but as a post it actually makes a lot of sense - great for seasoned bloggers and novices alike.

Independent Fashion Bloggers - How Will Fashion Blogs Evolve in 2001? - A fantastic resource for any fashion blogger, IFB's post on the changes we can inspect in fashion blogging over the next 12 months is comprehensive and insightful.

Dressful - 20 Sarcastic Tips to Become a Successful Fashion Blogger - an excellent tounge in cheek look at how to be a 'successful' fashion blogger from a site packed full of useful info on the fashion blogging scene.

If you go down to Leigh Woods today...

...you would have been in for a big surprise. My friend C is currently taking a photography course and she decided that Leigh Woods would be the prefect destination for a quirky shoot.

That's why on Sunday afternoon I was hauling a bag of jewellery, masks and other such props through the woods along with C and several of her friends, dressed in capes, Sgt. Pepper style jackets and boating hats. We certainly raised a few eyebrows amongst the families, walkers and cyclists enjoying a quiet Sunday stroll.

I can't give away too much about the shoot as C was working with film and hasn't yet developed her photos but above is a Polaroid I took of the quirky characters enjoying a mad hatter style tea party.

It was a fab afternoon and fingers crossed there will be plenty more projects like this coming up in the future...

Style History

My (soon to be) in-laws have been having a belated spring clean of their house and garage recently, which resulted in several boxes of the boyfriend's belongings turning up at our flat, competing for floor space against books, furniture, bags and whatever else gets thrown on the floor when I walk through the door.

To cut a long story short, the boyfriend inherited the task of dealing with his grandparents house after they passed away a few years ago and so it was that we found ourselves on the living room floor, sorting through boxes of stuff he had decided to keep at the time. While he tackled military memorabilia, I was trusted with the task of trawling through 50 odd years of photographs.

As something of a photography fanatic, I was delighted to see everything from Polaroid snaps in the 70s to tiny, passport photo-size snaps from his grandparents in the 1940s. M's grandmother Christina used to be a model and the snaps that you can see here are ones her husband took of her throughout the years.

Above: M's grandmother Chris, third from the left

This was long before the age of digital photography and yet there were literally hundreds of images like this of Chris posing on holiday, outside their home and with her friends. There were shots of her taking part in modelling competitions and on holiday in a kaftan Ossie Clark would be proud of.

One of the things I love about fashion, blogging in particular, is how important street style and different sub-cultures have become. Outfit posts are so common these days and while there are some blogs out there that excel at this (The Satorialist and What Katie Wore, for example) there are also many bloggers out there that deliver half-hearted attempts. I include myself in this majority, which is why you won't often see me posing in my new threads.

However, when I look at all the images of what were effectively outfit posts for a different generation, I am inspired by the relationship between subject and shooter. Some shots are candid, some staged but in each Chris has that glamorous appeal that I associate with this era.

Fresh faced but with immaculate hair, fitted outfits and simple accessories, these images could appear on any vintage fashion blog today. Although fashions and models of camera changed over the course of 50 years, her knack of style and her husband's love of photographing her remained the same.

I wish I could have been around to experience such important decades of fashion and photographic developments but for now I'll settle for seeing them through the lens of M's grandfather.