Adding borders and other effects

Running the Pre-Flight Checklist. Wings Over the Rockies Museum, Denver, 2012

There are many software programs available that can add a wide variety of borders, stylizing effects, as well as toning to your images.

In the above photograph, I added the border and the toning with the Nik Silver Efex Pro software in all of about one minute. Among others, Nik, Topaz, onOne and even Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Elements all have plenty of presets and options to customize your borders, add different tints, overall style effects and tones to your images. You can make your photographs look like old daguerreotypes, aged snapshots from your grandparents’ attic, pinhole camera images, or even peel-away Polaroids. For mobile devices, Instagram and Hipstamatic apps are popular for coverting snapshots into what some say are more interesting pictures.

Here’s the thing, though. In some cases the borders can indeed add interest to your image, but…and here I throw out my considered opinion. Yes, they might be fun to play with but, generally speaking, if your image can’t stand on its own without sprucing it up with some fancy pants edging or antique coloring, then perhaps your image isn’t strong enough in the first place!

My thought is that the viewer should be paying attention to the subject matter and composition of the image itself and should not be distracted by the unusual effects. It is quite easy for the viewer to intially react positively to the special effect (grunge HDR is a great example, but that’s for another day), but if he or she were to really analyze what the image is about, it might be found lacking. Take my photograph above, for example. Would it really catch your eye if it were a straight color or monochrome image with no unusual tinting or borders?

Of course, it all depends on what you intend to do with your work. For fine art or more serious artistic photography, there is probably no real place for such contrivances…unless (and I think this might be rare) it is somehow smoothly integrated with the subject matter and style of the images themselves.

On the other hand, if your goal is to have fun with your photographs and share them with friends and family then I say, sure, go for it! A little playing around with your photography is a healthy indulgence every now and then. And, hey, you can make some nice custom postcards this way:

Bison Postcard. Yellowstone NP, Wyoming, 2011