EVEN MORE FUN WITH PHOTOS: MAKING STUFF

This post is about making stuff with photos. There are lots of cool websites on the net where you can do fun stuff with your photos - for free. This list is just a sampler of what's available.

You can turn a photo into a personalized eCard at Picnik, adding text, speech balloons, stickers and special effects. Some of the choices are only available to paid members, but there are still lots of free options as well. One of my favorite Picnik effects is the zoom focus.




There are also lots of free frames,
text options and special effects at Tuxpi

Surprise someone by putting their face (or your own) on a magazine cover or a billboard at Photo505...










I also use my photos to create impressionist style digital paintings. I use software called Dynamic Auto Painter. It's easy, fast and fun to do. The resulting paintings really look as if they were painted with brushes. There are a number of different styles to choose from, and various ways you can adjust the end result. I've even sold a few of my paintings as posters and cards on Zazzle. My best seller digital painting is from a photo of a Harley motorbike.




And that brings me to another fun thing you can do with photos... you can put them on physical objects like mousepads, t-shirts, and mugs. I haven't tried this particular option yet, but I will... once I make up my mind which photos to use (that's one problem with having over 12,000 images!) Zazzle has a huge range of products to customize with your own images, and you can also sell products designed by you on the website. ArtsCow also has a wide range of products including a few not covered by Zazzle such as umbrellas, blankets and watches. Both Zazzle and ArtsCow have cards, posters and canvas prints, as do Red Bubble and Imagekind.

And if you had a photo or piece of digital artwork that you really really liked, you could even turn it into a wall mural at Murals Your Way.

Have fun!

FUN WITH PHOTOS: EDITING

Increased saturation and contrast

Photography is a big part of my life. Maybe it's my addiction! I have over 12,000 photos on Flickr (not all them are good - but I use it as a backup, in case anything ever happened to my computer.) I started to get interested in photography years ago when I worked in one hour photo labs in New Zealand. My job was to print photos, check them, and fix them if they were too dark or light, or a strange color. Perhaps because of that, I have always been interested in editing photos.

I love how digital cameras and computers have made editing easier for ordinary, non-technical people. For years and years I took all my photos on my camera's automatic settings, because I wasn't much interested in cameras... it was the picture I was interested in... the view, or the face, or the moment. Although I have learned a bit more about how my camera works over the last couple of years (enough to know I should buy a better one) I still spend more time editing photos and doing other stuff with them, than I spend taking them. And while you can't make a bad photo into a good one, many photos can be improved with a little editing.

Increased saturation & color correction

Sometimes people ask me what I use for editing. I use several different programs and none of them are Photoshop. I do have an old-ish copy of Photoshop, but it's all in Japanese, most of which I can't read. To start with I use Picasa to adjust light and dark contrast, sometimes increase the saturation (I like rich color), and occasionally crop my images. I also use Picasa to remove any small marks. (It's quite good for getting rid of wrinkles!)

Wrinkles & dark circles under eyes removed

Picasa is also very convenient for cropping images, but if the image needs straightening, I do it in Paint.net because if you use the straightening feature in Picasa the image loses some of its sharpness.

Straightened

Both Picasa and Paint.net are free to download.

PHOTOGRAPHY

                     Image via WikipediaI attended a photography workshop recently. There were two speakers, both very talented photographers. The first speaker gave us an overview of composition accompanied by an excellent slide presentation with examples and diagrams. He was very knowledgeable and had obviously worked hard on his presentation, so I felt kind of guilty that I was bored. The thing is, I'd probably never take a photography course because I know I don't learn well by listening. I prefer learning by doing. Although I'm seriously considering subscribing to  Kelby Training, because the 'lessons' are in video format, showing professional photographers on location doing real photo shoots and explaining what, how and why as they are working. And I have picked up a lot from David Peterson's Photography tips. They're written in plain everyday language, only tackle one topic at a time, never take more than two minutes to read, and yet they've helped me understand my camera modes much better, and given me lots of practical ideas that are easy to remember.

The second speaker talked about why he believed film was better than digital format. He did have a good point. Because film is more expensive and time consuming than digital, there is a tendency for the photographer to take more care with each shot. He believed that extra care would lead to better photography. It really made me think about the way I take photos. I typically shoot hundreds at a time, and quite a few of them don't work out. As a photographer, I'm not in the same league as the speaker by a long way, but I never could have afforded to progress to where I am using film. Digital cameras give everyone an opportunity to enjoy photography.

Also, I think it's a mistake to assume that the aim of photography is to produce art. Different people use photography for many different purposes. Some people use photography to create fine art. Some people use photography to record history. Some people use photography to document injustice and suffering. Some people use photography to share their experiences. And digital photography makes it all easier and more convenient.

Better photography... better for what? Better for who?

A long time ago I listened to another talk which criticized the digital photography revolution. The speaker said that one side effect would be the loss of the shoe-box of out-takes. You know! Your parents probably have one, tucked away in a closet somewhere, full of embarrassing frozen moments, unflattering angles and lighting, bad hair days and headless wonders....

With digital cameras we just hit the delete button and those out-takes are gone forever. Or we upload them to our computers and 'fix' them. Goodbye acne outbreaks! Goodbye dark circles under the eyes! The problem is we're erasing our humanity. Future generations might be able to look on our perfected images, but they won't have a record of who we truly were.

Maybe I'll make a new folder called 'Shoebox'