Foto Shoot Friday – When you got Lemons
I feel so unqualified to be sticking my nose in on this particular blog day in the Sweet Shoppe calendar. You see I consider myself pretty much a point and click photographer – if I like whats on my screen then I just click away! I used to play a lot more with settings pre digi cameras but then we didn’t have the luxury of post editing with such ease and were reliant on the developer for the quality of the end product (unless of course you were a developer!) When my children were born I took most of my photos with my Pentax SLR which was then over 15 years old. We only went digital just over a year ago and most of my early digital LOs are all using scanned-in photos.
As a point and click shooter I end up with my share of lemons. Most of the time even though the photo quality leaves a lot to be desired the memory and emotions wrapped up in them wont allow me to leave them unscrapped. If they signify a memorable moment then I want it layed out even if the photos dont live up to my expectations.
So – for today – I offered to do a little rant and a LO to inspire you to scrap the not so grand ones. Here is the mission I set for myself;
1. Scrap these photos:
2. With Sweet Cherry Lime from Eve Recinella:
Why? Well it made sense to me! The kit is fun and fresh and was ideal for the mood I wanted to create for this series of photos. I knew they needed a lot of editting and that B&W would be the best way to go to eliminate the lighting variations. The fact that the colours didnt fit wouldnt be an issue either with mono tone photos.
The photos are pre-digi so I scanned em all in and surveyed the results. The bad: definitely a few lighting issues, plenty of red eye fixes needed, some sharpening required on all of them and since the kids were often moving I have some issues with subject alignment (well – at least I thought that sounded like a good excuse!).
Ok I had a lot of work to do so I cheated and used 2 Actions – one a sharpening action (SharpenPSE) by Michelle Pearson and the other a highkey B&W action by Holly McCaig. And the end result? What do you think?
There are plenty of Tutorial sites around offering some must have how to-s. Try visiting Scrapbook Bytes Home page – they have a large amount of tutorials with links from the home page. Here are some others for you to explore: Jessica Sprague Blog has a great tut (go to June 02 post) on using gradient maps to retone colour pics to black and white (this is the method I now use for all of my B&W conversions then I fiddle a bit more with levels to get the contrast right. Heathrowe has many good tuts including this one on colour correction using levels.
Thats it from me and my photography – dont forget that no matter the quality of the photo, if it represents a special memory thats important to you and your family then it should be treated like the treasure it is – make sure they dont miss getting scrapped!!
