Week 3 Scrapbook Tip: Cropping Photos

Here's a bit of a review of what we have covered so far.

1. Start with a recent event
2. Choose your favorite photos that tell the story

And now for your next tip

Tip #3  Crop out excess sky, landscape or background when necessary

Yes, it is totally ok to trim or crop your photos to accentuate what you really want your photos to focus on.  These are the photos I posted in tip #1, my most recent event. 

 Although this one has a lot of background, the blur of the landscape helps tell the story of movement so I didn't crop this photo.

 I am by no means an expert photographer (one of my goals is to take a class) but cropping my photos improves my photo composition.   This one has a lot of "snow" white space and the person gets a bit lost in the scenery.

Here's the same photo, cropped narrower.  It helps to bring her more in focus.  As I look at this, my subject is centered and that doesn't highlight the movement.

Now, I feel like there is movement in the photo. 

 Finally, I love this photo and don't plan to crop it.  The perspective of the car tracks in the snow and how shows activity in the photo.

I like to work with photos that are 4 x 6, 4 x 4 or 4 x 3.  Smaller photos can be fun but I tend to use them in more artistic pages where I am taking more time.  The purpose of these tips is to make your scrapbooking faster, simpler and easier...so that topic is for a different series.  

Want to learn more about cropping?  I found this great article on cropping photos.  It has great visual explanations and comparisons.

You can crop your photos during your shoot (this is where the photography class comes in), you can crop them on the website where you print them (that is usually what I do), you can crop them in an editing program and then download them for print, or you can print them as taken and crop them as you scrapbook them.  Pick the way that works best for you!

Enjoy your scrapbooking,
Michele