Who of us hasn’t experienced this: you take a photo, and at the time of shooting expect it to be a great shot. But as soon as you upload it onto your computer, you are in for major disappointment as you realize the imagine is “useless” – it’s out of focus. If you haven’t, I’ve had my fair share of moments like these in the past. Maybe it wasn’t even me who took the picture, but someone else who didn’t know how to handle my camera well. Whatever reason it was, many times when we realize a photo is ruined, it’s too late to go back and re-take the picture.
But there is good news for all of us who do have those kinds of pictures sitting in our folders. We still can redeem them.

Even though one major rule of photography is to make sure to take sharp, focused photos (the clearer the details the better), there is another rule that says, you can break any of those major rules and still have great results. Let’s take this picture, for example:

A friend took this picture of me in the summer of 2009, and though he took a ton of photos at the time, this one was one of only two close-ups I got that afternoon at the beach. I was really excited when I discovered it among all the other thumbnails in my photo folder, only to realize when I opened it that the main subject (me) was completely out of focus!

I have another more recent photo – different scene, same problem:

Another friend took this photo, and again, not only is the main subject out of focus, but also the background clearly tells us this picture isn’t straight at all. And overall it’s just a bad picture, right?

Here is me again, last month visiting my friend, and though this time my friend was trying to implement the rule of thirds, it didn’t help at all, since the main subject was out of focus, yet again:

Looking at all those “bad” images, the big question now is: What can we do?

Well, there are several options:

1. Delete your images from your computer – they are useless!
While this is true to some degree, having bad pictures doesn’t mean they are completely useless. There are several ways of what you can do to improve bad photos dramatically (and I’m sure, some of you can add to the list I’m giving you today). So, if you are one of those people who doesn’t like to move your photos to the trash, here are some things you can do:

2. Use photo-actions or manually edit your image
There are many great designers/photographers out there who offer great photo-actions, some of them for free (if you don’t know how to manually improve your photos). I’ve been introducing some of the free photo-actions to you over the last couple of months, and I have a couple more to come.

This is the same image that I used as a “bad” image example above (image 3). All I did, was to apply a photo-action by My4Hens to this image, sharpen it up a bit, and you can see the result is stunning. A boring photo of poor quality has turned into quite a captivating image. The slight blur can even be used as an asset as it adds a little drama, and there is a sense of uncertainty/anticipation that is implied through the overall composition of this picture.

3. Crop your photo to improve your composition
On top of using photo-actions to improve your image, you can also change the cropping of the photo.

You can change the format of the image (I love working with wide/long landscape formats – they often have a very dramatic/interesting effect on the composition). You also can choose which part of the image you want to focus on. In addition, when cropping your image, you can eliminate the unevenness (or maybe even add to it, if that improves your composition), and even though the subject in this photo is clearly out of focus, instead of ruining it, it adds to the atmosphere of this image – it gives a sense of movement/uncertainty.

4. Use the lack of focus as part of your photo’s story
Instead of fussing over how bad your picture turned out, put the lack of focus to use. Make it part of your picture’s story. Unfocused photos can have a stunningly dreamy affect. As a matter of fact, some people actually purposefully take unfocused pictures. They either focus on an unimportant element either in front or in the background of the main subject, or they don’t focus on anything in the scene in particular at all. Both can have a very dramatic effect. And it can help you tell your picture’s story.

In the case of the photo with me and the beach, for example, the fact that the subject turned out unfocused adds a sense of depth to the picture. It really conveys the feeling of vastness that you get when standing by the ocean’s shore. That sense would have been completely lost, had the focus been on me.

Using Unfocused Photos for Our Scrapbook Pages

For us scrappers, having out-of-focus photos doesn’t mean they become worthless. As it happens, we can use the fact that they are unfocused as part of the story we want to tell with our page. We can edit the images, add photo-actions, crop them to our liking, and get striking results.

(See image above: “Symphony of the Sea,” where the story of the page is about marveling at the ocean’s vastness.)

Take image 2, for another example. An entirely “bad” image. I edited and cropped it and then I used the sense of movement/uncertainty from the unfocused photo to scrap a layout about my life’s journey. I also used a clearly focused photo to show how I’ve actually arrived at a place of contentment – the story is told in my journaling.

The bottom line is: if you have a couple of “poor” photos in your stash, don’t give up on them. They might turn into some great scrapbooking pages!