Monday, June 24, 2013

Cartoon Pictures Of You And Your Guests At Your Wedding


The artists who practice the unique art form of caricature are known as caricaturists. This involves drawing the portrait of a real human being by exaggerating his unique facial features so as to create a grotesque or comical representation of him or her. Simply put, it involves drawing cartoons of real people.

Simply put, caricaturists are cartoonists. Right from sighting the cartoons of politicians in the newspapers everyday to a one off instance where in a kid's birthday party an artist drew your son as a cartoon character, the examples of caricature are almost everywhere to find.

A clarification in this regard must be made at this point that mere drawing of a cartoon of any fictional character is never caricature. Caricature involves the drawing of a portrait where exaggeration or distortion is made on the picture of a real individual.

Caricature is an exclusive and inimitable art form, and the caricaturist possesses an individual talent that is quite superior to the ordinary drawing skills of other artists. In order to become a successful caricaturist, one must have the instinctive aptitude and dexterity required to recognise sophisticated shapes and patterns.

Do not forget that the brain of an average person possesses quite remarkable skills. Every single human being is capable of construing the things he sees around him, as different patterns and shapes. But, this resides in the subconscious self of man, and to be a caricaturist, one must bring this out to the normal world.

Simply put, one must possess a highly sophisticated notion of various forms, shapes and patterns, and the relations that exist between them. In order to make the process of forming a caricature easier, the caricaturist must have a large amount of supremacy over the figures and shapes.

The satisfaction for a caricaturist lies in the power of having strength and belief in one's abilities; the ability being, to create a whole new appearance of a person after processing that person's physical features and using it as a raw material to churn out his art form, thereby drawing much amusement.

The skills that a caricaturist needs therefore is primarily shape recognition ability and secondly the usual technical drawing ability that any artist needs to hone. Without these two nobody can become a successful caricaturist.

Apart from these, a caricaturist needs to practice a lot, because the more one practices, the more skilled he becomes. Keeping a sketchbook at hand and having the attitude to draw anything and everything, anywhere and everywhere works well.

Speaking of digital painting software, which make a caricaturist's work easier at the same time providing him with greater creative avenues, it can be said that there is no one best technology for caricature. A caricaturist needs to explore different software and choose the one whose interface he likes best.

As a caricaturist, one has the scope to work as a full time, as in an advertisement company or even as a part time freelancer getting hired to do one off events or projects. Whatever be the mode, caricature is primarily done to insult or compliment someone and therefore attain some bigger purpose like propagating a political message or just for mere entertainment.

Recent times have also seen caricaturists being used at weddings, birthday parties and all such events. Not only do they keep the guests amused but are also very good fillers between functions.

The evident outcome of this is that the victim's group of friends would squeal with laughter and the guests will end up taking back from the event a great memento.

Thus, it can be said that caricaturists who are talented in their art form have vast scope since there is a demand for them in society.

How to Encourage Your Guests to Take Pictures Through Photo Booths


Yes, it is true. Some of your guests during your important celebrations do not take pictures via photo booth hire service. There are varied reasons why. They may be just too shy, cannot have their own turn as some groups of people dominate the photo session scene, or are just totally indifferent and stoic when it comes to picture taking. However, it is your desire that all of your guests should have their pictures posted in your album so this is really a problem. How can you then encourage your guests to use the picture booth? There are several ways to do so. Here are some suggestions.

1. Take pictures with them. It will be a dishonor to the party host if guests will not indulge his or her request for a photo. When you notice that some of your guests are still adamant to take their pictures in the photo booth, a little encouragement from you by inviting them to share photo taking opportunities will help. This way, these people won't have any excuses as to why they cannot take pictures in the photo booth.

2. Threaten them with penalties. This suggestion works both for the super indulgent and the timid ones. Let everyone know how many pictures they are allowed to take and should any one of them exceed the limits, they will have to pay for the excess. This will discourage picture taking addicts and give room for others. Since pictures are developed quickly, request the crowd to wave the pictures and those who are empty handed will be given time to have their pictures taken and should they fail to do it, they will be asked to sing or dance or any penalties that you can think of.

3. Offer rewards. Even if the prize is a small token, it can definitely encourage guests to have their pictures taken through photo booth hire services. People love to win even if the titles are wackiest post, silliest pose, widest grin, and funniest face, among others. In addition, having this strategy adds more fun and excitement to your party.

4. Donate to charity ploy. Some of your guests might need an appeal to emotion in order to encourage them to have their pictures taken from a photo booth. A donation to a charitable cause gives social responsibility credence to your occasion and incites good deeds from your guests.

5. Make the pictures as their meal ticket. Nobody wants to be hungry and thirsty during parties, especially if the food is delicious and drinks are literally flooded everywhere. Thus, your guests will definitely fall in line in the photo booth before they can dig in their fork in their favorite dish.

All it takes is a little imagination and creativity when you want your guests to take their pictures in the photo booth. These suggestions add thrills to your party and might be a good conversation piece the morning after. If you have problems with guests who offer lots of excuses just to escape from taking their pictures with photo booth hire service, try the suggestions above.

Sunday, June 23, 2013

A Very Unique Wedding Scrapbook


We have all been to weddings where the bride and groom have placed a pretty signature book somewhere near the entrance. A pretty pen or pens usually accompany this pretty signature book.

While these books are lovely, they almost never are looked at again. I know when I looked back at my own wedding guest book there were actually a couple of names I couldn't read.

With some planning, you can create a guestbook that will be created as the guests arrive. You'll need to choose a scrapbook prior to the wedding. You'll also need to hire someone who can take and print digital photos on the spot. Next, find a local scrapbook consultant who will put together the album as the photos are being taken, so that by the end of the evening, you'll have a scrapbook-guestbook that everyone can enjoy.

As your guests arrive, you'll have someone at the entrance taking their photos. I am not a fan of Polaroid photos. This is why I recommend digital photos. With a laptop and photo printer, the photos can be printed out as they are taken. There are electrical outlets in almost every lobby I've seen.

You'll also want to have available precut acid free paper and pens that your guests can write a personal message to you on. After their photo is taken or while they wait to have their photo taken, they can both write you a personal message and sign their names.

If you have someone there who can create the pages as the photos are taken, you'll have a completed guest book by the end of the evening. Embellishments and enhancements can be added by the bride and groom after the wedding, if they want to add these items.

This is a very unique way to create your guestbook and have a lasting memory of your very special day that you and others will look at over and over again.

Signature Frames - Your Guestbook and Wedding Frame Together At Last!


So you have been invited to a wedding. Whether you are a friend, family member or the proud parents, one of the most important, if not stressful decisions is what to buy the new couple. This new union will require a unique gift, a gift the newlyweds can actually use and enjoy. Is there such a gift that can provide these qualities while still being original?

Well there is, and just when you thought all of the best wedding gifts and ideas have been taken. Here is a gift that will create a memorable presentation at the reception by including everyone at the wedding while simultaneously providing the newlyweds with a lifetime wedding display to remember their special day.

It is called a signature frame, and if you're not familiar with this gift, it is a picture frame that can display photos of the newlyweds surrounded by signatures of their guests. It is a modern combination of a wedding frame and guestbook, it is the best of both and much more.

Most brides will buy a traditional wedding photo package and use the traditional guestbook, but how often do couples really revisit their photo albums and what happens to that guestbook after the wedding? That's the great benefit of a signature frame because it will actually display those precious memories so they can be celebrated every day. In other words, the newlyweds can have their cake and eat it too.

The other great benefit of a signature frame is that it can be part of a rehearsal dinner and/or wedding reception. Not only can it be signed by everyone in attendance but a fun idea is to fill the frame with pictures of the newlyweds when they were kids, dating, or during their engagement. That way, when guests autograph the signature mat, they can also view these fun pictures and be included in the couple's past history and memories.. The signed frame, complimented with the fun pictures, can then be presented to the new couple at the end of the reception as a gift from everyone. The newlyweds can later add their wedding and/or honeymoon photographs when they are ordered in the future.

This special gift can give newlyweds a permanent framed display allowing them to re-live and celebrate their wedding day, everyday. This gift will truly become their first family heirloom.

Wedding Photo Editing - Some Photoshop Ideas to Make Your Wedding Pictures Glamorous


Weddings are indeed one of the happiest moments a person can have in his or her life. Of course, walking down the aisle with the man you love is just one happy moment, with all the friends and families gathered together to celebrate and for sure, you would want your pictures to be of best quality to make the event much lovelier to remember.

However, it is a fact that we don't have the control of what our wedding pictures may come out in the end. You probably want some background eliminated, or you want to enhance the colors of your pictures or you want the color of your bouquet pop up in the photo like it is real, you can always find for a wedding photo editing. What is nicer is that, you can actually do it at home.

One of the most popular programs to help you glamour up your photos is Adobe Photoshop, and you can actually learn it at home. If you really want to save more cost in hiring a Photoshop expert, you can easily learn photo editing at home. Here are some ideas that you might want to do with your wedding photos and make them glamorous.

- Stick to simple editing. When it comes to wedding photo editing, the simpler it is, the better. You don't have to change the background to a more sophisticated one that guests won't recognize. It is also wise to stick with the background but you can blur it a little if you really don't like the background messing up your wedding kiss. You may also want to airbrush some distractions at the back but always stick to simple editing that will enhance the pictures and not make it something like a ad poster.

- In wedding photo editing, the most common styles and effects that add glamour and beauty to your photos are turning your pictures into black and white or sepia which adds drama to your photos and fixing the focus of your photos. If you had a picture that is focused on the background rather than the subject, you can make use of the Gaussian blur menu on Photoshop and blur the background a little more to make the subject pop up in the picture.

You may also add a little dreamy effect on the subject to make the photo more elegant, but remember not to overdo the blurring, as it may not also come out nice.

- The vignette is also another effect that can be done in wedding photo editing. It is helpful in drawing the attention of the viewer to the subject by lightening the edges of the photo - which is a good effect if you want to get the viewer's attention to the newlyweds in a wedding photo.

You can also turn a photo into black and white and retain a portion colored. A reception table adorned with beautiful centerpieces and floral arrangement, for example, can be turned into as black and white retaining the centerpieces colored to make its color pop out of the picture.

Indeed, there are many possibilities to make your wedding photos glamorous and you can do it by yourself also. Of course, by learning how to make use of some simple tools in Adobe Photoshop. 

Wedding Photography Tips For Amateur Photographers, Article 7 - Dealing With Divorced Parents


Photographers: Dealing With Divorced Parents at the Wedding

I had a beginning photographer send me an e-mail with this question:

"I am photographing a wedding this month and will be dealing with divorced parents/step-parents. There is animosity between the divorced parents and the children involved. When doing the formal photos how do you deal with this type of situation. The bride says she only wants a picture of her and her mother. She does not want the mother in the formal family pictures. Suggestions???"

Divorces are tragic and heart-rending. A wedding is a celebration of two becoming one, and most weddings with a history of family divorce will be a bit more complicated than one without. Not only may the bride/groom have to deal with emotions and feelings that have perhaps been buried for years, but the divorcee's will have challenging emotions to also address:


  • perhaps the wedding will remind them of happier days

  • perhaps seeing a former spouse at the wedding will be difficult for them.

If you are going to be photographing your first wedding and will have divorced parents in attendance, my first bit of advice is to be sensitive.Don't make a bad situation worse!

Secondly: map out all the formal photos and groupings ahead of time.

This is the practical approach I take at a wedding that involves divorced parents:


  • I'm there for the bride and groom. The parents have made their decisions and have to live with them. If there are hard feelings and the bride/groom don't want photos with a certain relative, I'm not going to force them to.

  • On the other hand, if the bride/groom invite their parents (or the parents' new spouses) to the wedding, I'll usually end up taking pictures of them because they are there.

  • I try to be as conciliatory as possible during the photos. As I alluded to earlier: I don't want to be the one making a bad situation worse. I want to be known as the person who tried to make the best of any situation!

  • It has been very common at the weddings I've done which involve divorced parents for the divorced parents to be willing to be in a combined photo with the couple, one parent on each side of the couple. Without fail, the parents will then ask for a separate photo with the couple and I'll usually do it because it is quick/easy.

  • It helps to know who the divorced parents are so that you don't accidentally ask them to stand together!

As to the specific situation you mentioned when the bride doesn't want the mother in the formal family photo - you'll have to work to make sure that happens without causing a situation. I would be careful to not announce "OK, all the Bride's family come up now" because the mother will likely come at that time. I would specifically call up those that are needed.

Depending upon how obvious you were being with the photography you could call up some, take the shot, then add the mother in and take another shot. The bride could then choose which photo she wanted to have printed later on.

In summary, the key is to know exactly who should be in which photo ahead of time and arrange the group photos so you are adding people to the grouping and taking shots, and then perhaps subtracting people and taking shots.

Inexpensive Personalised Wedding Invitation Cards


Most people have their wedding cards designed so that the content is wholly personal, but imagine how impressed the potential guests would be if the personalised wedding invitation card was so personal, it had a photo of the happy couple.

Usually, there is a good choice of template photo cards from which to choose and that most certainly is the case if you visit Bonusprint. People usually only marry once in their lives and, therefore, to create wedding photo cards that are truly personal can really add to the souvenirs that will help to mark the special day.

Of course, it's not just inexpensive personalised wedding invitation cards that help to make sure guests know the date, time and location of the wedding that are important; once the balmy days of the honeymoon are over and the gifts are unpacked, it is time to write all the thank you cards. How much more impressive it would be if the thank you wedding cards feature a photo of the bride and groom actually cutting the cake on their wedding day. Thank you wedding cards can take a long time to write but if there is at least one personal photo on the photo cards, then there is little need to write extra words other than a simple and sincere message of thanks.

The tradition is that people who were invited to the wedding but who could not attend generally receive in a little box a piece of wedding cake. How much more personal the pieces of wedding cake would be if they were accompanied by photo wedding cards so that those people who missed out on the big day could at least have a keepsake of the wedding.

Online photo wedding cards take a little bit of thought when choosing the photo but when it comes to creating the photo cards online, nothing could be simpler. Photo cards are generally printed on high quality board so that the wedding cards feel good when held in the hand and stand up when placed on a mantelpiece. Time taken to create wedding photo cards is time well spent because recipients treasure photo cards more than many people appreciate. Weddings are still joyous events, as we all witnessed when Prince William married his beautiful bride, Catherine Middleton, and, therefore, it is only right that personalised wedding invitation cards reflect the importance of the coming event to the betrothed couple; and that thank you for the gift wedding cards convey a little of the atmosphere of the beautiful day together with a few words of gratitude.

It doesn't take long to create your own photo cards; therefore, do your family and friends a favour and choose a lovely photo of you and your partner that reflects the happiness of the impending marriage or the very special wedding day.