July 12

CAPTURED MOMENTS
BY JASIA
A Monthly - Weekend With Shades -

Digi-scrapbooking is the perfect way to capture your favorite memories of an event or place especially when they're not the obvious ones. Here's an example of what I mean.

Here's a page I created of my favorite memory from this past Father's Day.

Notice anything odd about this page? Here's a hint: there are no fathers on this Father's Day page. That's because my favorite memory of Father's Day was the time we spent down at the beach with my nephews.

This was an odd (for us) Father's Day. It was the first one since my father in law died last December (Typically the whole family would have celebrated with him). Only one of our kids could come over to celebrate the day with us (I think that's a first too). So we invited my husband's brother, his wife, their 2 kids, and my mother in law over to the condo for the day. We did lots of things together that day and took lots of pictures, including the requisite family-standing-together-posed picture. But of all the things we did that day my favorite memory had nothing to do with the dads present. It was all about the kids. So I made the page that captured the best memory and that's the one I'll keep.

One of the best things about digi-scrapping is the ability to put together the memory you want to keep. It's about capturing the moment. You'll find that the best photos for capturing a moment are often the candid ones, not the posed ones. These are the photos that usually show action and often times the subject is unaware of being photographed. They're natural. They're a moment in time.

Taking good candid photos is an art in itself but it's one worth mastering for digi-scrapbooking. They make for some of the best memory pages of all. Here are a few articles on how to take good candid shots.

-- 11 Tips for Better Candid Photography
-- How to Take Better Candid Photos
-- Candid Photography

From personal experience, I can tell you that my best candid shots are the result of luck not skill. It's a lot about being in the right place at the right time, with a camera in hand of course! So here's my challenge to you. Take your camera with you to your next family event and try your hand at taking candid shots. Then create a scrapbook page telling the story and post it to your blog or web site. Leave a link to it here in the comments section. I'd love to see what moments YOU capture!