Last week I finally caved in and signed up for a Flickr Pro account. Why? Well, January’s a long month, I’d run out of free space for my photostream and the thought of three or four days not posting or doing pictureless posts was bugging me. Interestingly, when I started my blog I wasn’t that bothered about image content, but gradually as I began to visit more blogs (and think more about multimodality) I got into the idea of the visual element. I’m not big on photography, but interestingly having a Flickr photostream has changed my attitude. I like getting pictures of my neighbourhood and doing ’still-life’-type things (fruit, flowers, juggling balls etc). But with the blog, the words are in charge. I feel they’re my prime purpose. Image is decorative, illustrative or even tangential. Mostly I want the words to stand on their own…links to add depth or reference and images - well yes, I want them because they make the page look good. So there’s an aesthetic of design at work, but it runs secondary to the communicative act. If I had more time, my story runs, I’d learn how to tidy up my page, make the codes work for me etc. ..but it’s good enough for now.
I think what’s really interesting about this though, is that dynamic (or should I say organic?) quality of blogging. My blogging horizons have grown from very modest beginnings. I’ll have a go at this blog thing, nobody’ll find it, and even if they do, it will be anonymous or uninteresting. So I began with a few words, a few links - messages to myself really. Well, it’s a whole different ball game now. Working on Blogtrax has influenced my way of writing on the blog. Engaging more with Flickr has changed my attitude to digital images. The whole thing’s morphed and I’m really attracted to that… just recently, I started doing more diary-like descriptions of what I’ve been up to. Snapshots in words. Why? I just wanted to, and that’s the wonderfully free way you can approach blogging.
