JANUARY 18: Telling a Story Through Photos

Well hello my fellow MOCers.
Today we consider an age old dilemma. To crop, or not to crop, that is the question.

I tend to crop photos because I want them to look pretty on my page. I often crop them close and cut out anything I find undesirable for whatever reason. Many times I do not stop to really consider how my photos serve my story when I crop them. Let me show you what I mean.

Here is a photo of me with my daughter at her end of semester holiday party/awards ceremony. I have cropped it and made it black & white.



Now, here is the original, and I'm sure you can see why I was tempted to crop it. The background is busy, the colors are a bit wacky, and it is just altogether not a great photo



BUT, if I take of my artistic/creative outlet scrapping hat for a moment and put on my storyteller/memory keeper hat, let me tell you what I see in the original photo that is missing from the cropped version…

The location is the school Media Center. The party was held there because school enrollment is up and the entire 5th grade was moved to trailers this year and for various reasons we couldn't have the party in a trailer. When my daughter looks at this photo in 10 or 20 years she will be reminded of what her elementary school library looked like, crazy colors and all and I think it will mean more to her and stimulate her memory much more than my closely cropped black & white.

So, I am asking you today to consider the entire context of your photo. How does it serve your story and your desire to record complete memories? Consider that times and styles change. Our surroundings add so much to our stories. You very likely won't keep the same furniture or live in the same house for your entire life - might you want to look back on those things one day? I feel a sense of nostalgia over speckled turquoise counter tops from the 70's, but would I feel that if I had never been shown pictures of myself at the counter as a child? Even cityscapes change - favorite businesses & restaurants close, buildings go up and come down…and our photos catalog those changes. Ah, I ramble…

THE CHALLENGE: Select a photo with a background that you would normally be tempted to crop out - but that serves your story. Then scrap a page using both the original and cropped version of the photo on your layout. As this challenge has a storytelling focus there needs to be some journaling on the page.

Here is my page.



I honestly can't wait to see what you come up with.

The Rules: Your page must be a new page in order to count for the Month of Challenges. Please post your page in your page thread you created in this folder. You should have one post per completed challenge page. If you complete all 31 challenges, your thread should contain 31 posts. Please do not comment in the participants’ page threads so we can keep them clean. You should also post your page here in this thread, and people can comment here if they wish. Pages should contain at least 75% current Lilypad product (currently for sale in the store from either permanent designers or guest designers).

 

If you have two photos of the same subject matter taken at the same time, that will be fine. My main objective is that we consider how the setting of our photos adds to story.

 

Thanks for sharing, Molly. This is just what I had in mind when I created the challenge. I have lots of pages with photos cropped tightly, even just faces. Funny thing is that even though I really believe in the idea of the challenge, it was pretty hard for me to make the page!

 

Wow, ladies! Gorgeous, gorgeous pages already. Thank you for really taking the challenge to heart. I have such a huge smile on my face right now looking at your layouts!