Blog or Blag? Sharing your knowledge with the internet or platform for ‘gifts’?
How many bloggers start out to blag loads of freebies; make up, beauty treatments, kids stuff, holidays, coats... Who knows, is the world full of blagging bloggers? Or do bloggers have something more to give the world, an insight and inspiration? Are companies happy to give 'gifts' to those who are willing to champion their love of the brand? Why did I start blogging?
Love these girls blag.com , they are rocking it with a magazine, fashion line: they are busy ladies. The gift of blagging is a fine art, to talk your way into getting something for nothing. Well with blogging you are giving something: a fine review, an endorsement for a brand or company. Blogging is hard work, especially if you want it to be good. Hours researching, writing, editing, spell checking, coming up with amazing ideas, editing multiple iphotos and taking more photographs and more projects, it really is all consuming. Not to mention how hard is it to make a website: hours and hours, sometimes in tears over why oh why does the site load so slowly.
I started writing cazza.com because I wanted to write about my life. I have taken tons of photographs, I have 300,000 unedited from the last 15 years! Now I am wanting to write the story to the picture and always remember everyone and everything. Inspiring myself to have more fun and adventure and to look after myself and hope to inspire my readers to do the same.
So how do brands fit with cazza.com, what companies do I really like and respect? Olympus, Canon, Go Pro, Charlotte Tilbury, Jillian Michaels, Le Specs, Moleskine, Smirnoff, Bollinger, Victorix, Plumo, British Airways to name a few brands. I've been very bold. The first lesson of Sarah Akwisombe's brilliant No Bull Blog School, she mentioned the Olympus Pen E-PL7 camera, Sarah's blog and photographs are great. I thought 'Hey I'll come up with an amazing idea for Olympus, asking for 3 cameras!' I revised the photography pitch and sent it to the Olympus Pen E-PL7 pr guru, they are fab! I'm waiting to hear back, I'll keep you posted...
Since the dawn of digital cameras I've had 6 digital cameras. The first 3 were Canon Ixus', a really small neat camera that takes great photos. I moved on to a Japanese buy, Contax U4R that looked cool, clad in tan leather with a twisty body although the pictures were a bit blurry. Then moved up the Canon ladder to Powershot S95 . I wore that camera to death, round my neck on elastic, so it's always near, to take that picture. My latest camera is the Sony RX100II, a well-researched Christmas 13 gift. And I love the ease of my iphone camera although the quality isn't really good enough for photo books.
The Sony RX100II is a great camera; I just don't know how to use it. I've always had it set to portrait setting. I'm ashamed to say I still get flummoxed but f-stops, despite my degree in photography. (I went out more than attend the university,my dad wasn't too pleased when I said 'I didn't do too well on the course but my social skills have excelled') I watched a sweet interview with David Bailey and he's inspired me to pull my socks up and read Henry Carroll's excellent 'Read this if you want to take great photographs' book. Very simply written, with excellent graphs and beautiful photography. It's so inspiring and I highly recommend buying it (still don't know how to do affiliate links?) I want to read his book on portraits too, it hasn't arrived yet.
I would really love to be gifted an Olympus Pen E-PL7 camera and have my feature on the camera. It looks great, takes beautiful pictures, has a selfie screen and links to the Internet easily. If you want to get more fancy, you can change the lenses. I love fisheye lens and the pancake lens comes recommended by Sarah too. I would use it so well. I want to fill cazza.com with beautiful photographs and films. I like making silly holiday films and there's a few early cape films on my channelcazza youtube channel, I have 6 followers. I have big plans for channelcazza and I need a good camera to make that happen.
This weeks Music Friday will be my Ski 07 film, please take a look and maybe follow me on all social media platforms. I'm hoping my followers will grow organically and cazza.com becomes a well-respected source of inspiration and not just a platform for me to show off my life. I don't currently have the weight of followers behind me, to really ask for 'gifts' from these brands but I do have some great ideas and have more readers than I thought - Love Goggle Analytics!
I hope this unsponsored post inspires you to think about your photography and maybe learn how to use your camera, that you never use and document your amazing life with your family and friends.
Love love,
Cxxx