Tuesday, August 28, 2007

It's A Small Thing, But...

It makes a big difference.




These are two versions of the same picture of Number One Daughter on the beach somewhere below Houston, Texas in 1987.

This was an Ektachrome slide, and that raggedy, dark looking area at the extreme right of the frame always bothered me.

Not a huge deal, but it bothered me for this reason:

Having shot slides for so many years, I learned to crop my photos in the viewfinder. Because you can't crop slides.

Having prints made from negatives? Crop away, baby. Slides? No can do.

I always thought this was such a cute pic of her when she was a munchkin (she's 21 now) but inside me I just didn't like that bad area on the right.

But being a patient man, and really what else could I have done but live with it, I've lived to where I can scan the slide into digital form and using Photoshop Elements, fix that area that has always bothered me.

Like I said, I've always tried to crop in the viewfinder, and when somthing out of my control happens like that, it can throw the photo out of balance for me.

A small thing, but still, I like the improved version much better. It's what I saw in the viewfinder originally.

Even today with a digital SLR, I rarely crop a photo after taking it. I still try to crop the photo into final form within the viewfinder. Easily 19 out of 20 of my digital photos on this blog are not cropped.

Old habits die hard.

9 comments:

photowannabe said...

Cute little munchkin and photo elements did a great job of lowering your stress leval.
Nice scan.

kmm said...

Isn't great that we can now fix our these older photos. I had one of my son on his first birthday, that now is in a frame amd displayed after 34 years.
Lovely photo of your (then) little one. Cheers Kerrin

Ben Nakagawa said...

I agree, the improved version is much better in framing and colour tone.

I was mostly shooting negative in past but still try to clop the image by viewfinder. What the big disappointment is that a PhotoLab clops the side because it cannot fit to the paper. Well, If I do the print by my self that is another story...

lv2scpbk said...

Cute photo.

Dave said...

SO true about cropping and slides. I always loved slides better however as they gave you a richer deeper colour... At least I thought so.

Nice blog by the way!

Chica, Cienna, and Cali said...

all that practice over years helped....i more often than not have to crop my images though i strive to click cropped images...but my success rate is not anywhere close to yours....

lovely pic :)

Jo's-D-Eyes said...

Hi, Yes it can be very much of a difference HOW and with What kind of program you work with.

I strted with PHshop el, now Phshop 7but I would like to know more about all I could do with it... its too much...

I love the photo and your great beby-duaghter on it.

:) JoAnn

CG said...

It's a beautiful pic now much improved. I crop nearly every photo I take. I'll try to be more considered in future!

Chad Oneil Myers said...

It is a good image. The adjustment made a good difference.