It's no secret that not everything goes according to plan... ask Olympians... there's been tears and tantrums aplenty, and perhaps nowhere have I seen more of it than in the hurdles; which is poetic really; the mere name of the race so neatly sums up the Olympic journey from optimistic start to tiniest trip and tragic tumble, or of course, giant strides, high jumps, mad dashes, and air-pumps... wow. I had to hold my breath when they raced; the adrenalin rush was overwhelming!Craft can be the same. Well ok, nowhere near the melodramatic adrenalin rush, but the poetic journey of optimistic start to successful conclusion or sad failure. And the family photo shoot falls into that category too. The reality is some photo-shoots simply work better than others.
Yesterday I blogged about how Lomography.com is having a competition (just for fun, there's no 'winners' in the gold medal sense (how refreshing!)) so I thought I'd share another quick photo-booth blog today... about when things don't go quite right, and more importantly, a quick way you can fix it.
I'm not a professional. As much fun as I have photographing my kids and my crafts, many of my photos are taken on my phone, in poor lighting, without notice. Hey, I'm a normal human being, I don't profess to be perfect. But the great thing about the digital age is that you can tweak much of what you do. And even if you can't tweak photos to be better than they are, because let's face it; you get out what you put in so to speak; there are ways that you can exaggerate the 'badness'.
One way to push poor photos a step towards making them look acceptable is to use a 'vintage' filter. When my girls made and decorated paper crowns at their local play-group, I took photos. Whilst my girls will always be beautiful to me, some shots were ok, many were not. By applying the '1960s' filter the slightly blurry photos were suddenly aged and the rounded corners then added a welcome distraction when I made a photo-collage. The result was a fun photo booth feel that makes me think of the simple pleasures and home-made crafts of my own childhood.
Next time you download your photos and don't like what you see, don't be too quick to hit delete. Take a moment and play with them, you may not be able to work miracles, but you might be able to come up with a something fun... so go on; say it with me; "I am not perfect, and that's ok; when things go wrong, I too can exaggerate the badness!" x
