Grunge It Up

Editing photos is not something I often do in my spare time. And just for the record, I have a very minimal understanding on this topic. (I don’t think applying text, stickers, and one-touch filters to a photo counts as much editing.) Now that I think about it, the only times I’ve actually had to use an editing app were when the pictures were either overexposed (too bright) or underexposed (too dark).

Photography has always been an interest of mine, but I have never fully committed to it. I would get into the habit of regularly taking pictures for a couple of months, but then I’d get discouraged and stop once I see all of these amazing professional-looking photos on social media. I would get bored and search for something else to do in my free time. But things will be different this time around. I’m determined to stick to this hobby for a while longer and become better at taking and editing photos.

I will start off my editing experiment with grunge photography. Grunge is a term I see used here and there, but it is not something I am very familiar with. According to iPhone Obsessed, these types of photos are often scratched, blotched, and/or desaturated (Marcolina 28). These photos generally have a sense of nostalgia or loneliness to them and involve a lot of post-processing and heavily editing. 

Here is the original photo before any editing:

In this case, I wanted to accentuate the sad and depressing tone that is sometimes associated with rain. Using the Snapseed app, I did some basic editing to try to mute some of the colors. I straightened the picture at about a +2° angle and cropped it accordingly to center the subject. Then I added vintage and a grainy film to the image.

Marcolina says, “Try going crazy with layers over layers, type and texture, saturation, blurring, and sharpening and see what happens” (Marcolina 36). I took this little piece of advice and made a second attempt at grunge. I took the edited picture I made with Snapseed and put it through another app called Pixlr. I did as Marcolina advised and experimented with different effects and filters. At the end, I added scratches, blur, a rustic frame, and a few subtle vintage filters. 

Here are the edited photos (left-Snapseed, right-Pixlr):

    

Grunge photography is one way to tell a story. How do you narrate yours through pictures and images?

Marcolina, Dan. iPhone Obsessed: Photo Editing Experiments with Apps. Berkeley: Peachpit Press, 2011. Print.