Craptography. The Art Of Taking Crappy Pictures.

Craptography is not a term that means the photographing of poop. It is an actual slang term that refers to bad photography which  means that I am a craptographer.

I sometimes take crappy pictures.

No.

Not sometimes.

I always take crappy pictures but I choose to only show you the pictures that are not totally crappy.

Lets’ just say for every one decent picture that you see here or on Facebook and Instagram, there is at least 20 crappy pictures that came before that or after that decent picture that I posted.

It can be a total crap shot.

Seriously.

Let’s take a look at my brief photo shoot last week.

These days I don’t have as much time as I would like to get outside and take pictures of the dogs.

My days off from my full time job and parenting are limited and for the last few weeks every single one of my days off just happen to be on the days were the weather took a crap and I’m faced with plummeting temperatures below zero outside.

Weather that crappy gives me about a 10 minute window to get outside and try to get some decent pictures to post for the week.

Now when I head outside with the camera the boys both immediately think that they are going to have to strike a pose and get treats, which is sometimes the case, but sometimes I want real life photos of them in their element. Their element meaning our fenced in backyard.

Well last week as soon as Sherman realized he was not going to get anything fun he immediately went and found a nice stick and plopped down in the backyard and ignored me.

Alright. Count Sherman out for any good shots.

Which leaves Leroy. Which means getting a good shot depends solely on Leroy’s mood and me.

Luckily, on this day Leroy was in a little bit of a feisty mood because of some freshly fallen snow.

“You want me to run woman?”

“Hahaha. Silly woman.”

“I will give you five seconds to catch me in motion before I body slam you. Catch me if you can silly woman.”

And here is where the craptography comes in.

Five seconds stand between me and Leroy having full body contact AND getting some decent pictures for the week.

So I have to shot fast and move and hope my camera does the rest of the work.

Well here’s how that went:

I know everything that went wrong. The reflection from the window. The lightning. My position. My settings. My zoom lens. The crap in the background. The fact that Leroy did a little move to the left when I assumed he would come straight at me. That trickster.

All these pictures are crap….and realized after the fact.

Which means I stood out in the freezing cold looking through my pictures only to find out they were mostly crap.

CRAP.

Out of that whole series one came out decent and even in that one I managed to cut his legs off.

The whole shoot wasn’t a total loss though. I did manage to get one shot of Leroy and his chilling breath. The only edits to this is a bit of temperature adjustment to give it a cooler feel and a quick crop in Picmonkey. This is usually the extent of my picture editing.

But and this is a BIG BUT….this picture ranks as one of my all time favs so that makes the whole shoot a win even if it mostly consisted of crap.

So let’s recap.

Out of 67 pictures I took that day, 4 were worthy of being posted and one went into the top ten list.

That’s pretty crappy.

That’s craptography.

This post is dedicated to all those who are looking to improve on their photography skills this year or for those who scan through Instagram and see all those glorious photos and think they can’t hang. You can hang. Professional photographers and people like me who just love to take pictures of their dogs but only post the decent ones…..we all belong to the Craptography Club and you will too but you must keep in mind the first rule of Craptography Club:

You Do Not Talk About Craptography Club. 

Your point is to trick everyone into thinking that every time you take a picture it is awesome.

Never, ever talk about the crappy ones. 

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