different way to rescue your 'ruined' photos!

If you're into photography like me, whether professionally or as a hobby, I'm sure you will have come out with a few ruined pictures due to poor focus, or by cutting off an important bit of detail no matter how good you are! I certainly admit I have! We all make mistakes, and we all have to learn! The thing is though, great as Photoshop is, sometimes they really are way beyond rescue.

My main hobby is art, which is what led me initially to photography. I needed a way to get my own art sources without 'borrowing' photos from books etc, and photography gave me the chance to capture a moment to paint later without having to sit out in the street!

So if you're the creative sort, (and if you have a good eye for photography you will have a good eye for art) do read on for a very different way to rescue those pictures...

I usually edit my photos immediately after getting home from an 'expedition' in the usual habit of deleting the blurred, unfocused or cut-off shots leaving the perfect ones to be saved. You do the same? Yeah, most of us do. But then I realised that those deleted ones are the very photos I should be transforming into paintings and art! A lot of us, amateur or professionals, already know to transform any beyond help dull photos by converting to mono for more impact. The detail of the scenes are perfectly 'saved' in my memory anyway, its hard to draw purely from memory but I just need a little reminding of the detail or shape which is where even a blurred image can work!

How many times have you had just ONE opportunity to catch a moment or subject and it ends up blurred or cut-off? Argh! Sometimes I come across situations where either I haven't got my camera with me (doh!) so can do a very quick rough sketch of the main detail, and fill it in from memory later. Or there are times when it wouldn't capture the scene as I see it with my eyes, my camera is now quite old and basic so is a bit rubbish in dim light (I am saving up for a proper DSLR though!), and I remember looking up through the knarled branches of the trees in the New Forest thinking just how magical they looked with the stars sparkling between but that there wasn't any point even switching my camera on! But that’s OK, because I felt I could show so much more of the magic, and the feeling of the moment with my paintbrush anyway!

If you like the sound of sketching away and drawing or painting in detail but like most people never thought you could, have a look at my website http://learntodraw.weebly.com. After some prompting I decided to write an e-book to help transform people into confident artists!