I read recently that photography is the only form of visual art where you don’t consciously add elements (“shall I give David a fig leaf? Naaah, my wrist is sore – leave him naked!”) but rather consciously have to exclude them. You point your camera at a room full of people and it’s up to you whether to shoot the entire room or the detail on one woman’s hat.
Blogging is a little like that too. You, as the blogger, can choose what to share with your readers and what to leave out.
You might choose to tell them about the souffle before the one that appeared on your blog. The one that refused to rise and tended instead towards the consistency of a squash ball. Or the muffins where you confused the amounts of flour and oil which were more amoeboid than muffinoid.
Or you might exercise your artistic license and exclude that little detail from your post.
Or you might post lovely pink and turquoise pictures of heart shaped pasta to build up to your entry into this month’s edition of Click! (a new event hosted by the lovely Bee and Jai over at Jugalbandi), leading readers to picture you flitting around your perfect home in your pastel-coloured apron, thinking sweet thoughts, smiling benignly and humming the Sound of Music under your breath as you click away at your pretty pasta.
Or you can tell them the truth, which is that you were in head-to-toe black, clearing a 1 square foot square space in the chaos that is your living room to accommodate the shoot, and that you had My Chemical Romance blaring as loudly as decency would allow on the stereo.
Nothing like boys in eyeliner for my creative impulse.
Follow me every day in November as I complete National Blog Posting Month – a post a day, every day, for 30 days! Here are all my NaBloPoMo ’07 posts so far.
