HHC Blog

Our friend said that if we had some good photos from Arizona, he would use a couple to decorate his house. I was thrilled. I’ve always considered our photos as “office art” – the one that you may hang in your office and if it gets damaged or is stolen, you don’t really care. “Home” is a special place. Home deserves something much better. But I was excited for this opportunity, didn’t bother to tell him what I think.

It didn’t take him long to pick 3 photos. One of them is a panorama of the desert garden, which I took with iPhone. Would it be sharp enough when we enlarge the photo? To find out, I printed it at 16 by 20 at Sam’s club. It looked all right, I decided. I then used Photoshop to come up with the size and the composition that we all liked (printed several copies in between, of course).

Two weeks later, I brought the photo to West Photo at Minneapolis (which is 2 hour drive) to print. The lady at the shop told me that it would print better if I increase the DPI (dots per inch) to at least 300, and their printer, actually, is able to print 320. My photo, sadly, has 72 DPI – the right amount for posting on the web or viewing on a PC monitor. She even showed me how to change DPI in Photoshop (using image-resize). I thanked her and took the photo home.

I usually printed my photos at Sam’s Club. In my opinion, they do a very good job with 4 by 6, good enough job on 8 by 10 and OK job on 16 by 20. Once in a while I had to print the same photo again because the color didn’t turn out the way I liked, but most of the time, I was satisfied. Not to mention that their price is good.

When I got home, I Googled and read about DPI, and increased the DPI of the photo to 320. I thought it was a good idea to try Sam’s first so I could compare this one with the 72 DPI one that I had printed there before. When uploaded photo at Sam’s, I received an error message… maybe because of the file size (the person who worked there couldn’t tell me why). I went home and made two copies of the same photo: one with 100 DPI, and the other 200. Sam’s machine was able to upload both. I printed the 200 DPI one.

When I got the photo back, I was shocked.

The photo was so dark that a lot of details were missing. Does increasing-DPI make photos darker? I Googled. The answer is “no”. Could it be the quality of the photo?

Before giving up, I emailed Greg, who works at West Photo. I explained to him my problem and asked him if he had any suggestion for me. He asked me if I had calibrated my monitor for color (I remember Cee had mentioned this before). “I don’t think so,” I said.

Back to Google again. After reading a couple of articles on calibrating monitor color, I emailed Greg: how about I’ll send you my photo and you tell me if I should print it or throw it away?

Greg said sure. Wasting no time, I emailed him the photo, and a couple of minutes later, he told me the photo is good.

When I picked up the photo, I was happy. It looked much better than Sam’s copy. (I used iPhone to take this photo from the printed copy. The original one looks better 😉

My friend said he would buy the photo. I’m thinking… I probably should pay him for giving me such a wonderful learning opportunity. And… I have had so much fun!

I have mentioned that I wanted to start a new project on my recent post Scottsdale Trip, Blogging, and My New Project. At that time I called it “Look! You are Beautiful”. My goal was to take photos of many people and give photos back to each of them, so they can see how beautiful they are regardless of their skin color, their religion, and their living condition. I particularly wanted to target those who were somewhat struggling with life right now and hoped that seeing their own photos would cheer their up.

Well, I started the project on Mar. 9, and since then I have made several changes. (1) I think… by targeting those who are struggling with life right now, I may already make them feel uncomfortable. I’ve decided to take photo of anyone who is willing to participate instead. (2) Even though I believe that everyone is beautiful, I am not sure everyone wants to hear that he is beautiful. I decided that the word “beautiful” had to go. However, when I give the photo to the person, depends on the person, I may just say, “Look! You are beautiful.” (3) I need to know when to end this project, and I think 1000 photos will do.

So, now, I call it My 1000 Photos Project. 😉

At our town there is a church where anyone can walk in to have a free lunch meal on Saturday. L, who started Saturday-noon-meal more than 20 years ago, is still in charge of the program. I had a wonderful phone conversation with L, and later stopped to help prepare lunch 3 weeks ago. I found out that people who volunteer there are very friendly, so since then, I’ve been there every Saturday.

I met Ed the first week I was there. I told him about my project and he said, “You can take a picture of me!” When I went back on the second week (with my camera), I couldn’t stay too long and Ed didn’t show up before I had to leave. So, I took several photos of volunteers, considering as a practice run. I was sure that the photos I took wouldn’t mean much for volunteers, since they probably had plenty of photos of themselves.

This week, I gave volunteers’ photos back to them in each individual envelope and inside, I wrote “Look! You are beautiful.” To my surprise, everyone was so excited to see his/her photo that I could feel joyful bubbles floating in the air.

Marge

Robie

Mike

All of them have volunteered for many years (8+).

Ed showed up this week. So I finally took his photo. I asked him if I could use his photo on my blog. He said, “Sure. Make sure you write that I am single.”

Ed

Ed also convinced Don to participate. Don would like a photo with his son.

Don

Looking at these photos, I am sure that you would agree with me that everyone is beautiful.

Now I only have 990 to go. 😉