Welcome back! I’m here for my next installment from The Volunteer Photographer’s Zone.
The #1 simplest photo editing tip!
You can drastically improve your every-day ‘happy snaps’* with just this 1 super quick and easy step. No need for fancy mobile device apps, either. This will come in handy when you are on an animal rescue transport relay! Give a quick crop before you upload to the run’s group chat, and onto the Doobert Rescue Success page.
Use cropping to remove detracting ‘stuff’ in your photo. You do not always have opportunities to frame everything perfect as you snap a photo. Sure, you want to always be aware of what’s around and behind your subject, but the simplest tool that will bring a major touch of improvement to the photos that you capture randomly is the crop tool. I am not familiar with every single smartphone out there, but I am confident they all, or almost all, have this simple edit feature.
Yes, there are many apps as well that can give you filters, fixes, color enhancements, even make your photos look like a pencil sketch or a cartoon. Not all wish to play with all that though. I’ve been doing post-processing for decades, starting back in print film days working at a custom photo lab. Yikes, that was BSP: (Before Smart Phones!). And even [way] back then, a commonly requested custom technique was merely to crop something undesired (or some-ONE lol…. out of their image, or crop in tighter on their subject matter.
Look at these before/after samples below. These are simple crops, enhancing the subject matter. Do you like the results?
#1: We don’t need all that dark area above the heads of these two doggies, nor the toy basket off to the right, correct?
#2: How adorable would this face be if we just had the face? No one needs to know I was trying to “hold” the dog, plus the 2nd dog’s head was buried, so it adds nothing to the pic.
#3: Yep it’s me! Lot’s of extra background, I only need Doggy-n-Me and the Door Magnet.
So there ya have it – Give it a try next time you snap some pix – Cropping absolutely makes a difference, and you’re on your way to enter the world of Post-Production :0) What other mega-simple tricks of the trade do you use?
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*’Happy Snaps’ was a phrase my fellow photographer Chuck used one day, I thought it aptly captured the simplistic & general approach to smartphone / and Point-and-Shoot Camera style photography! IMHO it should be a genre… LOL
Love & Cheers,
JJ
visit me anytime at BlueJ Imagery & Art
