It's not secret that every influencer or fashion blogger in this world has to edit their pictures somehow to achieve great quality content and impact visuals both in their sites and social media platforms. I'm tired of seeing SO MANY fashion blogs that absolutely lack in quality pictures, where their bloggers post the exact same picture in the same spot repeated almost 9-15 times per post, and where lighting and angles are far from being great. That doesn't appeal nor even invite me to keep reading a fashion blog. And I say this because I'm a geeky, insupportable perfectionist girl versed in visuals and architecture, who loves caring for detail and whose fashion blog pictures aren't taken by professionals in any way, but instead, shot by friends and family who are always kind enough to do me a huge favour into this.

In today's post, I want to show you that if you have a fashion blog (or blog of any sort) or at the contrary, you are planning on becoming an influencer or just planning on boosting your social media accounts, you don't need to splurge all your savings in a professional equipment or photographer. You just have to be a bit more thoughtful when it comes to the content you share, and pay a bit of attention to these little tricks I'm going to share with you today to achieve a PRO fashion blog. I've even shoot the pictures for the blog by myself sometimes, with a tripod and a remote.

So, let's get started! How do I edit my pictures and what is my advice for achieving a great quality fashion blog?

#1 Shooting at dark as less as possible
Dark is your worst enemy E-V-E-R. Specially when shooting fashion, as you'll have some serious issues when moving around and getting some dynamism in your pictures, as they'll get all blurry and confusing. Not nice. In fact, if you ever get close to nice quality pictures, you'll have to spend endless hours editing them, as I did in one of the last collaborations I shot for Lightinthebox.

Instead, try shooting while in the Golden Hour (just a bit before the sun sets) or early in the morning, so you won't be under direct sun but still get awesome fashion blogger pictures with nice and soft hues and no harsh angles at all.

#2 Always correcting green, orange and red hues
Greens are the worst tones whenever I try to print anything related to urban planning or architecture floor plans. It's super difficult to balance and smooth them out, and they always seem to look wrong. The same applies to fashion pictures: greens, oranges and reds always seem to stand out A LOT. It's not bad to give them the main character spot if they're under control anyway, but let's say that desaturating them a bit with your photography software will balance the whole picture and keep everything coherent.

#3 Low saturation
This is actually quite personal but, I prefer low saturated pictures where the colors doesn't draw much attention. Not to the point of getting rid of the pictures' hues at all, but I prefer going for subtler, softer colors than striking ones when it comes to the pictures in this blog. I always try to find that balance between luminosity, great exposition and great colors but still trying to achieve that soft look of colors that doesn't stand out much. Kind of tricky!

#4 Careful with too much exposition or burning pictures
Coming back to the point above, exposition and luminosity are great, but be careful with overexposing your pictures! When you take pictures under direct sunlight you better master the technique or have mind blowing retouching skills, or you'll end up without corners in your pics (which will be replaced with a lovely white stain), white parts where there shouldn't be any, too much reflections... That sort of things.

Instead, when shooting in direct sunlight or noon, try taking your pictures under a shadow (as, under a tree or a high building which projects some sort of filtered light) or instead, find a great porch or lobby litten up enough but without sun rays entering directly.

#5 Trimming, fugue points and vanishing lines
Pictures whose backgrounds are unclear, full of diagonal lines or uncentered subjects are a big NO-NO.

Kind of a mania as well, but I always look for refined lines and proportion so, besides correcting skin flaws which appear sometimes, looking for real horizontality at the horizon line (no matter if it's a wall behind you, or the actual horizon!) and verticality in façades and props surrounding me, with Photoshop's tool "skew" its super easy to achieve those, which will add not only quality but also professionality to your fashion blog!

Also, sometimes trimming the picture helps not only on focusing both in the subject or the fashion item you are trying to highlight, but is also helpful when getting rid of unexpected aspects appearing at the background like, people staring weirdly, cars or vans, trashcans and other urban mobiliary. Not the best solution anyway, but sometimes it's helpful when finding the true purpose behind the picture as well.

Before applying any color effects and corrections:

After correcting the horizon line (in this case is the wall behind me) and applying some trimming to the picture:

#6 Angles and poses
Tell whoever is taking your pictures to play with different angles, or take advantage of the background or place you're in to be part of the photoshoot! Why not climbing up those stairs to take the picture from below? What if you put your tripod a little bit higher or you sit on the floor to take a detail pic of your shoes?

As well as in the angles, try learning a couple of poses so you can vary and not only change your facial expressions, but also showing how the fabric or the shape of the dress/pants/whatever you are wearing act when walking, jumping of sitting on a bench. I personally have searched before for videos like this starring professional models as Coco Rocha, and where they show up some interesting or fun poses to try. And I said TRY, because you don't want to end up cracking your leg or anything when posing for pictures to be shown at your fashion blog!

#7 Locations

#8 Different zooms at details and aspects of the outfit. Don't be repetitive
I'm so, so tired of fashion blogs featuring outfit pictures of their bloggers in the exact same poses and backgrounds. They get to share almost 10 to 15 head to toe pictures of them which I must say, doesn't have anything cool at all. I don't know about you, but I want to see not only how well that dress fits the model but also tiny details as the buttons, or maybe a zoom into the fabric or pattern, or how tall that shoe actually is... I don't know, but I want some variation!

My advice here for killer fashion blog pictures is always look for the unexpected in your outfits, like, how flowy the skirt actually is when you walk away, or the tiny necklace or earring you are wearing and which at first view might be unnoticeable... Not only the whole package counts when shooting pictures for a fashion blog, but attention to detail is key as well.

I don't know about you, but Valencia is a city where Spring and Autumn are pretty nonexistent seasons.  In fact, most Mediterranean cities are alike, changing from the humid, coldest winters to the hottest summers on a blink of an eye. So, my wardrobe usually gets from cozy, wool sweaters and knitted scarves to shorts, light dresses and tank tops in just a few days... More or less.

However, we do have some days when the temperature is not high enough but it feels really good to be on the outside. This weather feels like strolling around the city and start wondering about eating ice-cream or sunbathing. So, that's why I feel interesting to do a little #recap and sort of #throwback on the blog to show you 7 Spring outfit ideas you can try RIGHT NOW, because they're easy peasy, pretty basic on the foundations and super chic.

Let's get started then!

I must confess I suffer from a massive Diogenes syndrome when it comes to fashion. I keep everything. I was taught since I was a little child to take care of everything I got my hands on, so it's not rare to still find on my closet pieces from my teenagehood that have been kept on almost their original condition, fairly new.

So, when it comes to organisation everything is a bit tricky. Not only I've been accumulating tons and tons of clothes during years, but also since I renewed 100% my room furnishing 2 years ago I've become more conscious not only on how much clothes I own, but also how many of those pieces I really wear on a daily basis, and most important: how I store them. Doing a closet rehab may be the best way to get into the budget fashionista path. That's why on this post, I want to show you some tips on how to start organizing your closet (bigger or smaller, walk-in or cupboard), finding space on places where it seems impossible to, and also some personal advice on how I keep my clothes stored.

I don't know who said that "an image is worth a thousand words" but, whoever said it was right. I don't know about you, but I'm a very visual person. My mind works more with images than words. I'm used to dealing with graphics, signals, colors every day in my life. So, when I was working on this post I thought the right thing to do to get the best results possible was to make a comparison chart, something similar to a "Do's and don'ts" of fashion blogging. Because I know some of you have just started your own fashion (or not fashion at all, but a lifestyle, beauty or just random topic) blog and are full of doubts. I've already talked about "How not to lose motivation when fashion blogging" and some things I've experienced in my almost 6-year freelance fashion blogging career.

So today, I wanted to make a really quick exercise of self-criticism, not only for you but also for me and this blog. Looking at this chart below, I hope you can tick some of the practices best and most famous fashion bloggers do, and if not, just start working hard to get some of the goals done before the end of this year. Only for the record, let's make clear that the "regular" column doesn't mean you're doing things the wrong way! But, if you want to stand out of the ordinary and have the best fashion blog ever, you'll have to focus on things like caring a lot for your template design and branding, have a nice photography and keep working hard. Always!

Which column is your blog at? Are you regular, or the best blogger out there?

Almost 5 years of fashion blogging, and I still manage to feel amazed everyday. I was a total rookie on fashion when I started this adventure, and as a lot of things in life, you start learning and accumulating experience little by little as events go by. On this 5 years of posting my own outfits and some previous years of watching others mixing and matching their clothes, I've learned (or secured the ones which were already there) some concepts and fashion tips I know I'll use and make the most of them the rest of my life. Some of them are my own experience, others have been discovered by intuition or seeing others' outfits.

Want to know what are the 7 style tips I've learned as a fashion blogger?

I was really sceptic about this trend of mixing navy or dark blue with black, but after watching the Yves Saint Laurent biopic and discovering he was a pioneer mixing this hues, I started believing it couldn't be that bad. Actually I haven't tried it on public, but now wearing a black suit with a navy blue accessory or blouse doesn't sound like a bad idea at all.

Starting a blog may be one of the easiest things ever. Keeping it, not so much. As a fashion blogger who has been writing for 5 years, and being one of those opening and closing multiple previous blogs for different reasons, I can now assure you that fashion blogging is one of the most enriching experiences I've ever lived. The reason behind the end of this previous blogs which arrived nowhere was mostly lack of motivation, and it's the key of why 9 of every 10 fashion blogs stop its operation on the first year (which is an absolute loss of creativity and content!).

Keeping a blog, and a fashion blog specifically is a hard job, I won't deny it. Is as hard as you want your fashion blog to be serious, proficient and professional looking. And a true challenge when you don't make a living of it, but you just blog for fun. That's my goal with Something Fashion.

So, as I know firsthand motivation is the key on keeping your fashion blog the highest possible, I made this blog to encourage you, dear reader or fashion blogger (or blogger-to-be) and give you some advice I've been trying myself for this long journey.

Step by step, little by little
Aren't you believing that the first day you start blogging, readers, visitors and followers will be falling directly from the sky, right?
I hope you are not, and aware that Rome wasn't built in just one day.

And because of that, I recommend you to set little goals instead of getting more than 1,000 readers on your first week, for example. Writing two or three posts before launching your blog, or getting two or three comments on your first week may be realistic goals on the short term.

If there's something I've been obsessed for a long time now, it's been Dolce & Gabbana designs. Since I started following their fashion shows and catwalk steps about 3 or 4 years ago, I've fallen in love with too many of their items to keep the count of them. Still, my budget is limited and a regular college student can't obviously afford one of their designs.

As I've been really inspired and really in the mood these last days on crafting and creating new DIY projects, and although tutorials on how to make it like a pro can be found all over the Internet, I've decided on showing you guys how to master the Dolce & Gabbana inspired jeweled headband from their FW 2012-2013 fashion show inspired in baroque and Italian nobility.

Supplies and things you'll need:

Recommendations:

It's better if you stick to a 2 to 3 color schemes on making your headband. I chose for mine only black, golden and transparent beads and buttons. Otherwise, if you find any other bead or embellishment but not in your preferential color, buy a spray and color it!

Let's get started

Step 1 (optional):

• 150 cm x 150cm aprox. of a tight and heavy fabric like canvas or neoprene. For a more accurate dimension, measure your waist and double it.
• Scissors
• Needle and thread. Preferably you'll need the thread on the most accurate color possible for the fabric and thread on the most opposite color for basting with large stitches.
• Sewing machine (or you can hand-sew it)
• 20cm zipper
• Iron
• Measuring tape
• Pins. Tons of them

Step 4:

Put the zipper on that hole of 20cm high you left at step 1. I recommend presenting it closed and with its handle facing the right side of the fabric (be careful about not putting it reverse!). Then pin it being careful not to leave any fabric on the path of the zipper, or you'll have trouble clasping and unclasping it. Then you can hand-sew it or sew it by machine.

Step 6: