When you crank up the DA home page you see a little slideshow, and if you look closely at the edges of the images, you’ll see what are called sloppy borders. They’re…sloppy, and they’re borders. They’re just what they sound like.
They’re kinda hip right this minute, but we weren’t sure if we should use them since we try to follow the rhythm of our own drummer. In the digital age, they’re a bit of an effect, and you never know if an effect will stand the test of time, or will end up being the next star filter. We tend to stay away from trendy because we fully expect our client’s children to be enjoying our work in 50 years and we want our images to, in some way, be classic. Dynamic, fun, cool, dramatic…but classic too. That’s what we’re going for.
So why’d we do it? Well, because I used to actually make “real” sloppy borders. Back in the day I used to print my own photographs from film, and a sloppy border signified that you hadn’t done ANYTHING to your photo. It was a sign for geek purists like myself that the print was exactly what you shot. I used to use one of these…you’d take the piece that holds the film and file it back a bit so you’d see the whole negative and no one could accuse you of cropping. Cropping was verbotten, a sign that you couldn’t compose. The sloppiness came from the fact that you took a metal hand file and hacked away at your film carrier.
Anyway, for the first 3 years I shot weddings, I printed every b/w image in the second bedroom of my little Falls Church apartment, and every proof was printed with that filed down negative carrier.
Sloppy borders are kind of where we come from.
Oh look, it's Angie and Rob!
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