show {off} your shot

Hi friends! Welcome back!

My favorite shot from last week is a boring, simple, chain-link fence. But with great focus and a shallow depth of field I think it turned out really interesting. I love it!

Congratulations to this week's winner, Jessica! from Image-ine!

Help yourself to my winner button!

 

<center><a href="http://andthenshesnapped.blogspot.com" target="_blank"><img alt="and then, she {snapped}" src="http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j52/drexgal/winbutton.jpg" /></a></center>

This week's tip:

Don't be afraid to crop.

At our playdate last week I snapped a few hundred pictures (I know, you're surprised). And some of them were just ho hum...

But with a quick and easy crop I was able to get rid of the annoying little kids distractions on the right and bring your attention right to where I want it (Our friend Annabelle and the back of Charlie's adorable head, of course). Whenever I crop I do try and keep my favorite rule (the rule of thirds) in mind, for example on this photo Annabelle's head is approximately in that top left "sweet spot". Granted, it's still not my best. photo. ever. But, it's much improved, don't you think?

The tigers that day were not all that interested in assisting me (and all the other MOMtographers) in getting an awesome close up shot. So again, this started out rather ho hum...

So when I got home I cropped this sucker. (again using the rule of thirds). And I don't mean to toot my own horn or anything, but I think this shot turned out AMAZING!

The problem with cropping is that you can potentially run into resolution issues, but with the size of camera sensors these days (mine is an outdated 10 megapixels, newer ones have upwards of 16!), and the fact that I'm not going to be printing this at poster size, there's really nothing holding me back from cropping to my hearts' content! So give it a shot (haha! a shot!) yourself. I'd love to see if you can save some ho hum shots, just by cropping!

I want to clarify that you can link up any photo you want each week.  I don't choose themes, and you DO NOT HAVE TO FOLLOW MY TIP. I would LOVE if you could share a tip of your own each week, but if you don't have one, please feel free to show {off} your shot anyway!

Now it's your turn! Link up!

Rules Guidelines:

~One photo per person, and the photo must be taken by you.

~Blog about your photo and share something about how you took the photo, or how you edited it.  (because it is so fun to be able to learn from one another).

~Add my button (below) to your blog post...(text links are ok too, but please do link back to me or I might cry)

~Link up to your blog or Flickr page, (but please link up to your specific post and not just your blog homepage...if I can't tell what post you are linking up I will have to delete the entry).  

If you have ANY questions, feel free to email me.

I can't wait to see what you come up with this week!

<center><a href="http://andthenshesnapped.blogspot.com" target="_blank"><img alt="and then, she {snapped}" src="http://i77.photobucket.com/albums/j52/drexgal/101014_2456_centuryfont.jpg" /></a></center>

Ready?  GO, and  show {off} your shot!