An Imperfect Photo

Each of us has a different story about learning digital scrapbooking. When I began my first digital scrapbooking class in 2010, I quickly noticed how much better the photos of others were much than mine. Then a friend told me that as my photography improved so would my scrapbook pages. While I am not by any means a professional photographer, I think she gave me great advice. Spending time studying and practicing photography while taking classes on different aspects of digital scrapbooking has made it easier for me to create scrapbook pages in Photoshop.

I generally begin my pages with a photo, like this one of my granddaughter as we left her class on Wednesday. I actually think she enjoyed playing in the snow with that stick more than class, but that’s another story. The dirty snow from the asphalt in the right corner was piled up and it was midday. I think my white balance is a little off and this photo doesn’t follow the rule of thirds. This is definitely not a perfect photo!

Yet, my granddaughter’s intensity with what she was doing touched me as she drew in the snow with a stick, and I knew that I could create a page about this moment in time. I didn’t need the entire photo to tell the story. When I exported it from Lightroom into Photoshop, I used the angle she was facing to determine how to position the photo in the top left corner of my 12×12 page. I began by clipping my photo to a Snowy FotoBlendz mask. Because the shape of the mask didn’t quite fit my photo, I merged the mask with an artsy stain that I stamped on another layer. The rest of this page is simply layering and blending with a digital paper and transfers from ArtPlay Palette Neige by Anna Aspnes. Knowing that I am able to take an imperfect photo to create a piece of art encourages me to continue to work on my photography because what I capture with my camera affects how I see the design of my scrapbook pages.