Twirl

My hubby had taken a photo of Claire dancing like a ballerina that I wanted to post on my blog, but I had to do some altering to it before I felt comfortable doing so.  Normally, I would just crop out the parts I don’t want to show to the world, but this photo was different.  My mother-in-law was sitting in a way that I couldn’t crop her out of the picture without ruining the shot.  It’s a great picture for the family website, but not the blog.

What to do?  What to do?

“Bring out the Gimp.”  (Sorry!  I couldn’t resist quoting one of my favorite movies, Pulp Fiction.  And, yes, I say it every time I open the program.)

Apparently my incessant nagging requests finally pushed my hubby over the edge and he saw the necessity in installing Gimp, a free photo editor, on my computer.  I tried my hand at it this morning.  (And, no, I still can’t get the movie quotes out of my head!) 

I’m not trained in this, or any, photo editing program.  The only experience I have in “photo editing” is resizing, cropping, and playing with brightness levels.  In all honesty, Gimp looks rather complicated.  Granted, I’ve never really used PhotoShop, so I can’t compare the ease of use or level of difficulty in completing tasks, but considering Gimp is FREE I really have no complaints.  I just wanted an easy way to blur out faces, etc.  I’ve accomplished this goal, in less than 30-minutes, so I’m counting this as a success.  Is there a better way to do what I’ve done?  Probably.  Do I have time to figure that out now?  Nope.  I’m pretty happy with the end result, so I’ll just leave it at that.

So, without further ado, here is the picture Daddy took of Claire dancing in her new Ballerina Dress.  She’s twirling on my finger and completely oblivious to anything else in the room.

You can click on the photo to enlarge.

Clicking a second time will make it even bigger.

There’s just something about this picture that I love.  Claire is in the spotlight, and the entire world is revolving around her, quite literally at this moment.  And, that’s okay.  There is something magical and appropriate about being the center of attention, especially when you’re two and twirling like a ballerina.