Jack Kitten - the Summer of '05

Ya gotta say it - "Awwwwwww!"

I've been scanning printed photos (or their negatives, if I still have them) from 2005. It's a tedious job but like most tasks, when I look hard enough I can usually find something that makes the work well worthwhile. In this case, I didn't even have to look very hard.

My BFF, Judy, is making me something - I'm guessing a book of some sort - using my and her emails back and forth to each other, and photos, from 2005. She has asked me for a long list of photos from that year, to go along with the stuff I wrote about in my emails. When I went looking for photos that she could use I realized that in 2005 I was still using (mainly) my Canon print camera, and was only just learning to use a small digital camera I'd gotten for the previous Christmas. (It's sad to see the very poor quality of my digital photos from that year, but at least I can see that I have since improved a thousand-fold!)

So, the days of scanning are going to be well worth it just for that, but there are other benefits, too. Since I'm a digital scrapbooker it's awesome to now have those photos in digital format and available for digital layouts. I can use them on my website, my blogs, email them to people, or share them at sites such as Photobucket or Flickr. Plus, they are now backed up on my external backup drive. If the prints or negatives get wet, or my laptop has a melt-down, no problem; I have backup copies!

In fact, I'm thinking I won't even keep the prints or the negatives. I think the negatives can be thrown away and the prints given away to whoever might want them. And....if no one wants them, I'm pretty sure I'm going to (gasp!) throw them out, too!

Yeah, a little scary, but I can't hold on to everything; my house is just too small. As long as I have digital versions I can always print out a copy if I ever want to. As I'm scanning the photos I have been tagging them with people's names, events, etc., so they're super-easy to find later. In fact, if I want to do a special layout for a specific person (or pet!) I can quickly retrieve all photos tagged with that person's name. Much easier than shuffling through piles of printed photos no matter how organized they are.

Oh, and one last bennie? Finding photos like the one at the top of this post! My guy-cat, Jack, when he was just a few months old and during one of his earliest explorations of the outdoors. Wow. Was he ever CUTE!

And since the photo is now digital I was able to bump up the color, sharpen it a bit, and then try out some creative cropping.

Bringing the focus forward to Jack:

Putting a slight leftward tilt on the photo:

And my fave, a very definite rightward tilt for a really fun look:

Jack-Jack the Jungle Cat

Can't wait to do some more scanning tomorrow!