January 5: Embracing Imperfection (Photography Challenge)

One photo was a bad composition, with the back end of my dog being chopped out of the frame but by placing the image tilted up at the main photo, I think it works for this page design. The main image, the bird, was dark as it was taken with no flash and I didn't want to hike up my iso too much. I brought up the mid tones and brightness in PS and then selectively increased the brightness, contrast and sharpness on the bird itself.

 

so this picture makes me cry every time I see it. It's me at the age of 5 with my cousin. (she's the one with the blurred out face). When we met Minnie, she covered her face and when we met Mickey, I covered mine. I hate that we did it and the only thing I can think about is that we were showing off who was on our "ears". So, here's my imperfect page of me meeting Mickey for the first time

 

Here is my "Comically Perfect Photo" and layout.



Journaling:
When we decided to visit Italy in 2010 Aunt Mary and I vowed that we would make sure the "We" were "seen" in what was sure to be hundreds of photos we took. We made a conscious effort to be "there" so that down the line our families could see us in the far away places we had the opportunity to visit. So, true to our word when we were site seeing at The Vatican we made sure to stop and capture photos of each of us positioned in front of the Basilica. Yet, it was not until we returned home and actually sat down together to enjoy our photos that we noticed a VAST difference between Aunt Mary's photo and my Vatican photo. While Aunt Mary's photo perfectly captured her standing in front of the beautiful Vatican Cathedral with a pair of saintly priests strolling through the background. My photo while captured in the exact same place pictured me standing in front of the Cathedral with a completely different type of background. In my background we see a beggar woman asking me for coins as well as a ?? Gentleman ?? leering at the old lady as if she was a piece of gum on the bottom of his shoes. No Saintly priests, no sweet nuns, or lovely Italians sipping wine........NOPE!! What is really bad is I do not even recall this old lady asking me for money! I told Aunt Mary that we were at least able to capture the less saintly side of the Vatican. LOL I just wish my photo had been the one to capture the more virginal side.
Ha! Ha! Ha!

Photo Imperfection: While my Aunts photo has the perfection of having priests strolling through the background of the Vatican my photo instead shows a beggar woman that stepped into my frame asking for a handout and a very unhappy man who is leering at the poor beggar woman. The background seriously took away from the tranquility and saintliness of the subject matter. I have been unable to use the entire photo without cropping out the additional subjects in any other layouts. This worked out perfectly for this layout. LOL

 

How cool that most of the items I had bought to eventually make this page are yours @KimJ! The top right photo was a bit blurry, plus there are shadows on our faces and I'm squinting. It never would have made the page without your prompting, though looking through the photos from that day, it might be the best photo we got of the 2 of us with the leaves. lol

 

really dark backlit photo....

 

The center photo of my son and his heifer was really busy and they blended into all the activity instead of standing out. I selected what I wanted to be the focus and copied it to a new layer. I used RadLab on the background to lighten and wash out the color, then I reduced the opacity to make it even lighter.

 

I love my almost-SIL to pieces, but she's not a photographer. Too used to her phone I guess, she didn't even look into the viewfinder of my DSLR. Anyway, since my brother is way taller than me his head got half chopped off. Plus it was very dark so I had to lighten it a bunch!

 

Such a fantastic twist on your imperfect photos!

 

These pictures were really bright and dark at the same time due to terrible lighting I couldn't control. So I turned them B&W

 

I really love this challenge. Though it was a challenge to pick which photos to use since I have TONS of imperfect ones. I decided to do a vintage layout of my paternal Grandparents wedding. The original photos were very light and faded. I adjusted the levels some to darken them and also used a filter on them.



Here were the original photos


Thank you for the awesome challenge!!!

 

Love the story on this one! I struggle so much with BEING in my photos. No fear of photos, just the only interested photographer. Great Scrap!

 

My original photo, which you can see in the gallery by clicking on my layout below, was badly focused and composed. I processed it in Lightroom and then blended it into the blue paper.

 

Although this was not in focus I love how is makes his face soft. I was running to catch him coming out from under the covers.

 

I knew right away that I would be picking these two photos when I read the challenge. These are screen shots from my phone while I was face timing. quality of the photo's crispness is fuzzy looking. But I love them as I was able to see my daughter and our son-in-law for our Christmas call.

 

I went with an uncooperative subject that kept wanting to show me his butt

 

Sheesh, Kim! This was a rough challenge! Thanks for making me stretch though! My pic is a dark and blurry iPhone 5 photo, with a messy background. I tried to doctor it in photoshop but really don't see a difference! I thought about cloning out the pirate ship, but figured I'd leave it.

Original pic:

 

These photos were so yellow and blurry... and I turn them black&white and add some lightness/contrast

 

i wanted to remember name of this song, so used my phone to snap a picture, i was zoomed in or too close. Could have just made a note of it. I did my layout not about photo, but memory of the song, does this meat requirements?

 

blurred green from the glasses is my imperfection