DIYPhotography.net

Is it cold and rainy where you are? I mean really cold and rainy. The kind that you don't wanna go out of the house. Here is a project that is both fun to make and play with.

It is a family flavored go fish. If you have small kids they will love you for it, and for the great family time you are going to have playing with it.

My little one had the Chicken Pox last week. She's all good now, but that was a week with almost all productivity coming to a halt, as taking care of a small kid who any wants to itch is a full time job. We did spend a considerable amount of time playing go fish. It is a card game with the goal of making four-of-a-kind-set. (The original game is played with a deck of poker playing cards, but they come with any subject imaginable).

Then My oh-so-clever daughter asked for a family go fish. Who am I to say no to a Chicken Pox stricken kid with a puppy eyes.

Here is what you'll need

• PSD cards template with four expressions cards
• 9 slaves family members who cna make a happy, sad angry and surprised expressions
• A camera (dhu!)

Taking the Pictures

The genuine Go Fish deck features 9 sets of four. I am a numbers geek so I did not want to kill the games carefully calculated statistics. I wanted 9 sets, which meant enslaving 9 family members for a few minutes.

Each family member should take four pictures: Happy, Sad, Angry, Surprised. It turns out that my wife's father is incapable of making an angry face.

I did not go crazy with lights, used an on camera bounce flash from a near by wall or ceiling. 36 is a lot of pictures and I did not want anyone to loose their patience.

If nice family members are hard to get (I was lucky and had a visit from both grand-folks and uncles that day), friends will work too.

Working with the PSD

First, get the PSD here (~19 Megs). It has a sample of how it would look with a Chicken Pox stricked loved one.

This PSD represents one set. It contains 4 cards. They all share a name and each has a different expression marked.

I tried keeping everything simple, so the only place where you need to change stuff is the change me folder.

• First double click the "name" layer. This layer is a smart object and you will be prompted that you are editing a "new file". OK that.
• Using the text tool, change the text to whatever name you want to apear on this specific set.
• Save the name file and close it. The names on all four cards will be updated.
• Now click on the happy layer. Again, you will be prompted about the file. OK that.
• Place a new happy portrait in the new layer and close the file.
• Repeat for Sad, Angry and Surprised.
• Once you have a full set done, do a "flatten image" and start a new set.
• depending on the biggest paper that goes into your printer, you may wanna do three or four sets per page.

Printing And Finishing

Once you have all nine sets, you can go ahead and print them.

For printing at home, you can simply print from the PSD file. If your printer can't handle thick stock, you can print them on an adhesive paper and apply it to the thicker card stock.

I also included bleed lines. You can use those to cut the cards yourself. If you are having those printed in a printshop, let the service know that the bleed is 1/8 inch, and the cards should end up being 3.5/2.25 inches.

Playing

This is definitely the fun part. Nothing like having your daughter ask if you have "a sad little brother" or "an angry mother in law".

Got ideas to make this better? to make other photo games? share them in the comments.