The V Spot

Rants, observations, and home decorating... from a woman with no time for a blog.


Make your bad photos work to your advantage.

27 Comments

I love photos! One of my favorite items to use when decorating my house is photos.  I have never been one to line the hallway with my kids’ school portraits (not a criticism if you do it… to each his or her own…). We haven’t had a whole lot of family portraits taken (the last time was in 2004, so we’re overdue, actually…) Instead, I tend to use impromptu group shots or candids… something a little unexpected.

We’ve all taken pictures that didn’t turn out like we wanted… too light, too dark, too blurry, too weird, funny angle, etc.  Don’t automatically delete them. You might want to try looking at them in a slightly different way.  Embrace the flaws in the picture and use it anyway…

A few years ago at the beach, I was playing around with the zoom feature on my camera.  I took these two photos:

Blurry.  No using the sharpen feature on these puppies… but there was something about them that I liked.  So I had them enlarged to 8 x 10 (which made them even more blurry) and I framed them.
I love how they look.  They remind me of those hazy, lazy summer days at the beach that roll into one big, blurry summer memory.  (Sorry, about the treadmill in the picture, but if I’m too lazy to run on it, I am certainly too lazy to try and get it out of the way for the shot.)
You know what can happen if a two year old gets a hold of your camera…?
Look at those lips!  Could you just die?!
Fortunately, Handsome Hubby has a good eye and he got the camera back safely and took a few more fun close-ups of Baby Grant.  We switched them from color to black & white and popped them into a frame.
I love this.  I think something like this is much more fun and has much more character than a line up of studio portraits would be. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Again, personal preference here…)
One of my very favorite “bad” photos wasn’t even all that bad.  I can’t show you the original because it was from my pre-digital camera days. (Yes I know I can have them scanned. It’s on my To-Do list.)  It was a self-portrait photo that Handsome Hubby took.  
  • It was by a window on a stair landing (so not a very pretty background)
  • It was taken in the early morning (so beautiful, rosy lighting but I was without make-up. Gah.)
…But I liked the overall composition of the shot, and I loved the way our eyes lined up. (I must have been standing on one of the stair risers above him…)   So I had a custom mat cut and framed just our eyes.
 
I have gotten quite a few compliments on this matting over the years.
I love that you can tell that we’re happy and smiling, even without seeing all of our faces. I love that I can look at this picture and it will immediately conjure up not just the physical memory of where we were and what we were doing, but the emotional memory as well.
And maybe that’s why I’m not a big fan of the School Picture Line Up or the Olan Mills Watch The Birdy Specials… those types of photos are great to chronicle the passage of time, but they don’t capture any emotional memories.  And I’d rather decorate my house with those.
Check the bottom of the blog to see where I link up.
 
Weekend Bloggy Reading

Comments

  2. Yes ma’am! This is wonderful! I predict that around the blogosphere you’ll soon be seeing lots of photos matted so that just the eyes show. 🙂

    Reply

  3. I do this all the time…I actually AIM for the random and candid shots…but I’m a horrible “print ‘er out and get it framed,” person.

    Reply

  9. Two Christmases ago my whole family was in Cali again at the same time, after many years of us not. So of course we go to the beach. And, of course it rains. 😉 It was dark and overcast and my camera was not loving me. We had a bunch of umbrellas and I got everyone together and snapped a few shots for as long as the kids would stand relatively in the same location. I ended up with a fun silhouette looking photo that I probably couldn’t have got if I had tried. It’s printed, framed and hung.

    Reply

  11. I have a mixture of both candid and professional pictures, and even some that look professional that I took using a tripod and the timer setting. I love the one of you and HH, they don’t say the eyes are the window to the souls for nothing and your soul looks happy!

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  13. Candid shots do have a lot more personality than professional or staged ones do. I realized in particular this past weekend that I look better in candid shots than me posing like a doofus. How are you supposed to pose?? I don’t even know!!

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  14. Super job!!! I love the pictures of baby boy and the couple eyes. Excellent work. Way to go…now… to go through my pictures… all 4,000 of them..

    Reply

  19. Amen to your last little tidbit. I’m kinda ashamed to admit that I’ve only taken my 2 yr old and 1 yr old in for professional pictures once. And the photographer photoshopped out my daughter’s faint stork-kiss birthmark on her forehead. She’s beautiful, and you photoshopped her!?

    Didn’t order pictures, never went back, don’t have the money, love the candid shots much better anyways…

    I love that I can feel the happiness from your pictures. Great post! 😉

    Reply

  22. New follower! 😀

    I always love when I upload a pic that looked crappy on my camera and it comes out even better than what I expected or what I was intending to do.

    Reply

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