Good Enough Photography

Charlotte@Living Well on the Cheap  —  May 16, 2013 — 4 Comments

I am not a fancy photographer. I used a basic point-and-shoot camera for a long time, and even now that I have a DSLR I shoot in auto mode 99.99% of the time. If I’m away from home I use my iPhone-no way am I gonna be lugging around a bulky camera and worrying about it getting broken the whole time. I snap a few photos and move on with my life. But I do like to think that thanks to this blog my photography skills have improved measurably, and I’m pretty confident these days that I can take a decent picture of my kid or my house. I thought it’d be fun to share some really accessible and easy-to-implement tips with y’all. You CAN take great pictures even without a fancy camera or Photoshop.

The biggest, number one, most important thing I can say is to never, ever, ever, EVER, use flash. Leave it to the professionals and their fancy bounce cards and diffusers. Even with my DSLR flash goes very wrong, very fast. Below is a photo that I took this morning in one of the darkest corners of my house on an overcast day. The left is with flash, the right is without.

no flash (570x429)

That one on the left is BLEH, am I right? I have yet to meet a camera that didn’t have an option to turn off the flash while still shooting in auto mode. It’s usually a little lightning bolt with a line through it. On the iPhone it’s in the upper-left corner of the camera screen.

Now if you’re thinking that your photos will be too dark without flash, you might be right. Welcome to the wonderful world of photo editing. I use the basic program that came with my computer. On the left is the photo straight out of the camera and on the right I’ve tweaked it a bit.

brighten (570x428)

Check out the difference between the photo lit with flash, and the photo brightened on the computer. There is so much more depth and just overall not-suckiness to the one on the right.

flash vs brighten (570x429)

As for what I did, here’s a screenshot. I used the “fine tune” feature to up the brightness, increase the contrast and shadows just a smidge, and lower the highlights. I just play around until it looks good but most photos get a similar treatment. I also often increase the saturation by clicking on “adjust color”, but not for this photo.

Untitled (570x320)

Now that we’ve got that under control, the next big frontier is embracing the crop. This is a photo that I took of Cassie and her mom at the baby shower I hosted last weekend. In addition to brightening it a smidge, I cropped it to get rid of all that wasted space around the perimeter and focus on the people. It’s an easy step that can really make a photo more frame-worthy.

crop (380x286)

Here are some more photos that I cropped from our visit to my sister’s baby goat. It’s a subtle change that can really make a difference. (btw these were both taken with an iPhone!)

crop2 (570x214)

crop3 (570x380)

And now for the final whammy-skipping flash, playing around with editing, and cropping to take a photo from “eh,” to “impressive!”

crop + brighten (570x191)

Big difference, right? And it takes maybe 1-2 minutes per photo (and of course turning the flash off takes no time at all). So, in summary:

  • abolish the use of flash
  • say yes to editing
  • cropping is your friend

I hope you find these tricks as easy and helpful as I do! Like I said, I’m certainly no expert and I’m actually really lazy so if I can do it you can do it. Even a cell phone camera can churn out frame-worthy pics if you’ve got a few tricks up your sleeve!

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Charlotte@Living Well on the Cheap

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4 responses to Good Enough Photography

  1. HATE flash! For blogging(which I don’t do often) I use a few photoshop fixes, but for more “important” pictures, like some I took for a friend’s lingerie shoot or another friend’s 1-year anniversary photos, I tend to be more in depth. Photoshop is fun!

  2. Yes! I embrace all of these tips because they are simple and you can do them even with a point & click camera. My camera takes crappy photos, so I still take photos with my point & click, go down to the basement computer, upload them, edit the brightness/contrast to make them look better, and THEN upload them to Facebook. It’s 17 extra steps, but I want my pics to look niiiiiice!

  3. Oops, I mean my PHONE takes crappy pictures. Samsung has a long way to go to be as nice as the iPhone!!

    • I agree! I am debating switching to an iphone when my contract is up in august just for the camera aspect of it. Also I really hate that Apple won their patent for the phone number links - I can no longer just press a phone number on the screen of my phone to place a call. I now have to write it down or try to remember it. Boo.

      P.S. I love your good enough series. Right up my alley.

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