The Good, the Bad and the Fuzzy

What am I going to do with all of the ideas floating around in my head? I have to admit that just like my photos, some are good, some are bad and some are fuzzy! Some ideas that seem so wonderful at 2 am or during the middle of working late and watching The Tonight Show may upon first light seem not so bright…..Others that come in little bits and pieces and are rather
fuzzy at first, may after a bit of pondering, turn out to be quite acceptable and even sought after.

As for my photos, some I recognize even before I release the shutter to which of those categories they apply. With others disappointment may hit me later as I realized I had used the wrong camera setting, the white balance was off or my hand was shaking.

Every once in a while I like to show you some things that can be done with some not so perfect but one of a kind photos. For instance, today I put my digital camera in my purse as we ran our Saturday errands. I saw some beautiful little flowers and set my camera on Macro to get a close up shot but when we drove away and I took a look at my photos, they were blurs….What happened? I realized that in my purse my camera setting had gotten changed to the Manual focus and messed up my close ups. I love the colors in the photos and decided to use them to create a background or element. (Perhaps this is why I actually have a real camera case…)

The good thing about creating on the computer is that we can rid our photos of distractions in the background, busy clashing colors and silly flowerpots that seem to be growing out of heads, etc.

For those of you in my age bracket, you may be stuck with a lot of those teeny little square photos from the 1950’s etc. They may have deteriorated quite a bit and probably some of them were not really sharp and clear in the first place.

In the next couple of months, let’s look at a couple of things we can do with not so perfect photos.

Today’s first page was done using the not so perfect photo of ME!…..It was rather fuzzy but I found a home for it in one of Carolee’s cute images!

Project 1: Life is a Scrapbook Page

1. Create a new page and add two shapes to fill with background color and texture.
2. Fill them with color, add texture, then resize and fill the portion of page desired. (I wanted part of it to represent wall and part of it floor. The floor is brown “cement” created in Digital Image Pro and the wall color is taken from the easel and is the Bumpy Lattice effect in DIP.)
3. Using effects, then option, choose just how much texture coverage and depth you want.
4. Add the image from the Paint Your Future Creatable on top of the face you want.
5. Use the transparency brush set at 100 % to let your face show through.
6. Add easel and add painting to the easel.
7. Add photo to hand and make her hold it by erasing all but the thumb.
8. Add artwork to floor area and use the skew tool to “prop” it up and then add shadow.
9. Add artwork and title to the “wall”. Artwork was created using various effects in DIP and PSP.

Project 2(a) and 2(b): What’s Your Background?

1. Our friend Sharon, (Gamma2five) created these two backgrounds.
2. This background was once a leafy plant until Sharon used effects in DIP9.
3. This was once a sunset. This would be a wonderful background for those Bryce Canyon Photos, etc.

I told Sharon that I was doing this lesson and asked if she would share with us. These were achieved using a variety of effects in DIP. What I would like you to take away from this is not that you must duplicate these exactly, but that you can experiment and come up with your own creative backgrounds just by being a bit more daring!

Project 3: Kicking it up a notch

1. Using Sharon’s background, if you want to add more depth another layer and a shadow.
2. Using the cut out tool in DIP, I cut out a rectangle, copied it and pasted it in the center of the page. I then added a soft shadow and then a bevel. This will work well with a scenic photo or even an inspirational quote or verse.
   

Project 4: Up one more notch

1. To add even more depth, add one more layer by cutting out part of the page, copying and pasting and adding a bevel effect.
2. This is just a start of what we can and will do. Play around with your photos and your effects and see what you can come up with!

Project 5(a) and 5(b): Being Photo Creative! (PC Pop Dots!)

1. Take a photo that you like and create a cut out an interesting point.
2. Copy cutout and paste in same spot.
3. Add shadow and bevel using effects.

Project 5(c): Just Another Step Up…

1. Use cut out tool and cut out frame shape.
2. Fill in center and you can add another photo!

Now for your assignments should you decide to accept them:

1. Look at your photos in a different light. Don’t immediately toss out the ones that may be a bit blurry or if they have colors that clash. Use them in a different way than you had originally planned.
2. Look at backgrounds in magazine and on billboard and draw inspiration from them.
3. Take some of your blurry kid moving photos and using effects see if you can turn them into action pages!
4. Your assignment is shorter this month but as always I ask that you HUG SOMEONE!

Hugs,
Thena