How to Select Scrapbook Photos

Video Transcript

"Grace: Hi. Welcome back to Expert Village. I'm here with my guest, Sonya Shepherd, and she's teaching us how to scrapbook. So, what are we going to learn? Sonya: Well now you've got your basics. You've got your tools. You need to learn how to choose your photos that you're going to scrapbook. We all tend to take a lot more photos than actually end up in the photo album, and that's ok. Grace: Guilty. Sonya: You know, especially with digital cameras, you're just clicking away. You don't even really realize it. It's not necessary to scrapbook every photo that you've ever taken in your entire life. It's completely impractical, actually. What you want to do is you want to choose your best photos, the ones that are really telling the story. And you want to look for clarity, for color, for things that are in focus, the action photos. That sort of thing. Now, there are two things to remember when you're looking at your photos. One is, you can cut your photos. I know that that's sort of shocking. It's a little bit scary. People are sort of raised that photos are priceless, and you treasure them. But, really, the bad ones, you can throw them away, or you can cut them. Grace: Oh yes. Do you have some examples of good ones? Sonya: I sure do. Here is an example of a photo my sister actually took. She did one of those one-armed things. And it's a fun photo of the two of us, but there's a ton of white space over here. I don't need that in my photo at all. What I can do is I can crop it down. I can cut it down, and focus on the really important part, which is my sister and I. An example of a bad photo, one that I would just be really hard-pressed to use, is this one of me. It's just very dark. The lighting is bad. You can't really see my face. It's just a bad photo. Now, if this was the only photo of me at my graduation, I would use it. But it's not, and so I would toss this. Grace: That's not the case, from what I saw in the case. Sonya: Exactly. Another example of a bad photo--this one. It's taken from a pretty far distance. It's blurry. The action is really bad. Again, if this is your only photo, walking across your stage at commencement, you work with it. You crop it down. You focus in on the main part, not all these random people sitting in the bleachers. Grace: Exactly. Sonya: That sort of thing. Grace: How about this one? Oops, I can't pick it up. Sonya: That's ok. This one, again, it's a super fun photo. There's a lot of kind of empty space so that you don't need to use that. If you're pressed for space on your layout, you can cut that out and it's not a problem. And, finally, there's--you've got your similar photos. Kind of a wider group shot. A little bit more of a close-in. This one's an interesting photo because none of us are looking directly at the camera. But it was taken from a different perspective. It's sort of fun. But, again, you wouldn't need to use both of these photos on your layout. You can choose which one's more important to you. Grace: Which one would you pick? Sonya: I'd pick this one, honestly. Grace: Why? Sonya: We just look like we're having a little bit more fun. It's a little bit more of a close group shot. Nice symmetry here. You've got the tallest--me--down to the shortest. Grace: I guess you are tall. Sonya: And this one's just a little bit more aesthetically pleasing to the eye. Grace: Yeah, it is. And it does look more natural than this one. Sonya: That is a little bit more posed. So... Grace: So, great. So, don't be afraid to throw away the bad photos. Sonya: Throw away the bad photos. Crop down photos that aren't taken the best, and you'll be a lot happier with your scrapbook. Grace: That's great. So what are we going to learn next? Sonya: Next, we're going to learn exactly how to crop your photos, and some different options for doing that. Grace: Nice."