by: Darrell Oller

Preserve Your Memories

With the proliferation of digital cameras, more people are taking more pictures. People are snapping pictures of children, nature scenes, sports and special events at an ever increasing rate. Cell phone cameras are improving quicky. These digital images can be used to create personalized artwork that will help preserve your memories.

In Search of the Perfect Picture

The perfect picture may seem elusive for an amateur photographer, but perfect moments happen all the time. Perhaps your toddler is just learning to walk or Junior steals second base. These can be perfect moments. Rather than try to list them, let's just say that a perfect moment is whatever you define it to be. Getting a perfect picture of that moment is elusive at best. The average amateur digital photagrapher faces problems that belie the advertising of

digital cameras as easy, one-step devices that cannot take a bad shot. Not every picture you take with a digital camera is a masterpiece. Many of your digital images do have redeeming value though. Many digital pictures look dark or blurry and an odd color. There is a limit to the amount of improvement that can be accomplished, but most digital images can be improved. With patience and a bit of practice, even beginning photographers can improve their skills. A steady camera, a little reading about compostion and above all, patience, will produce pictures that, perhaps not destined for the Louvre, will call to mind that perfect moment and help retain the precious memory.

Can This Picture be Saved?

A modern digital camera can do a lot of the work for you. It cannot aim itself, but it is quite capable of focusing and judging the amount of available light. Still, the most common problem with digital images is lighting. Images often appear dark and discolored. Though these images may be less than perfect, they often contain an amazing amount of image information. There are numerous software applications available that can brighten up these images and perform a bit of color correction. In many cases, a dark, discolored image may turn out well if adjusted properly.

This is part of the beauty of digital photography technology.

What is the Subject of This Image?

When you snap an image with your digital camera, you know the subject of the shot. Sometimes, when you look at the image later, the subject of the shot is not so obvious. This is where image cropping becomes valuable. Cropping allows you to remove the extraneous areas of the image and emphasize the subject. Again, many software applications exist that can help you perform this task. Cropping may transform a mediocre image into a family hierloom.

Image Quality and Stretching

Digital cameras come in many resolutions. Resolution refers to the number of pixels a camera will use to store a digital image. More pixels, more quality. See www.bhphotovideo.com/FrameWork/charts/resolutionChartPopup.html to view a chart that will give you some information about resolutions and print quality from bhphotovideo.com. As the chart suggests, images that you want to print in a larger size will suffer quality degradation as they are stretched. Poster layout, as provided by Pix2Posters.com allows enlargement of images with sensitivity to quality. Inclusion of several images into a piece of artwork allows higher quality images to carry the visual load while less than perfect images of perfect moments jog the memories of those happy times.

Use Your Own Photography

OK, you practiced your photography and now own several images that have meaning in your life. What next? Work with pix2posters.com to help you create unique artwork from your own digital images. Artwork based on your own memories will last a lifetime and become a cherished part of your home.