Where in the World am I?

Ever since Nicéphore Niépce found a way to photograph what he saw, people have used the medium to express art. Professional photographers use the camera to entice people to travel to new places, and have new experiences, and to record important events. No one could sell anything without a great photographer to show their product to its best advantage.

Take a trip with me to a place you probably have never been to, and imagine through photographs what it is like. With the magic of editing, I will show you something that is not what it seems.

WOULD YOU CLIMB THIS?

These pictures were all taken on my iPhone 7, in natural light, and edited with a free app called Snapseed. It is intuitive, and has plenty of options for an amateur photographer, I don’t sell my images, so I don’t know what the requirements are to be sure the images are ready for large scale printing, but I know many of the photographers I see at art fairs now, take their images with a phone.

These images are not an exotic place for extreme rock climbing, the only ones who climb these are the occasional ants. The deception is done with photography, and cropping. The rocky desolate place above was warmed up to look more like the dessert with the Ambiance feature turned up to warm the gray of the ordinary cardboard.

Now when you look over the images, you may see the tell that it is cardboard, and not austere cliffs to lure crazy people. The corrugation is more apparent, when you know it is there.

I also love Snapseed for my jewelry photography. All artists, unless they are photographers, get stressed when it comes to photographing their work. We want to have good photographs for our websites, Facebook, and Instagram. Jewelry is especially hard to photograph well, and for publication we must hire a professional. So, artists are always chatting and sharing what they have learned, to make good images, for an affordable price, for our everyday use.

For my website, Facebook, and Instagram, I love editing photos with Snapseed. For jewelry there are many more steps to go through, to make the final image look presentable, these are the steps I used for this shot.

The photo was taken on plain white paper, with two ordinary lamps, and 60W Cree LED lightbulbs. With a 5000K cool factor, whatever that means! I got them at a local big box hardware store.

STEP BY STEP

1. I used Selective to brighten up the dark background.

2. I cropped to a square.

3. I used Tune Image to brighten up the entire picture.

4. Cropped again.

5. Put a frame around the image.

6. Tapped Export, and Save a copy.

To remember the number for the image, I tap on the little i in a dark circle at the top of the page, all the nuts and bolts information will be shown. I suppose people who take pictures all the time never lose their images, they always know just where they are, but, it took me a while to find out that if I saved an image with Snapseed, they put an E in front of the number of the saved image, if I remember to write down the number, I can always find my image now. The original image is 8145, the Snapseed image is E8145.

Snapseed has a lot more bells and whistles that I sometimes use, and sometimes not, the app has been a game changer for me, and what I can do for my website, Facebook, and Instagram. If you do something to your image that you realize you don't like, of course, you can just press the x, and it is gone, if you like what you did, press the checkmark to save. You know to use save a copy!

SPEAKING OF INSTAGRAM

Did you know that you can put pictures from your computer, on to Instagram? Usually, you would want to put a picture from your phone on IG, but, every once in a while, there may be a picture lurking in your computer, and you want to put it on IG. How?

1. Open Instagram on your desktop.

2. Right click in a empty area, a box will pop up.

3. Scroll down to inspect.

4. Click on inspect, and all the secret code will come up, on the right of the screen.

At the very top of the page of all the code, is a small rectangle box, in a bit larger square box. They represent the phone screen, and the computer screen. Click on that, and if you have clicked the right way, and held your mouth right, a small gray dot will appear on your screen. You have now tricked your computer into thinking it is your phone. Use the gray dot to click on the next steps.

5. Click on the refresh icon at the top left of the screen. This is important.

6. Now there should be a plus sign at the bottom of the Instagram screen, click on that with the gray dot, and you will know what to do.

When you are done, you have to tell your computer to stop pretending it is a phone, and go back to being a computer, just do the steps in reverse, and don't forget to click on the refresh icon. I hope this works for you and your computer, the important part, is to know that it CAN be done. It is possible that different computers have to be tricked in different ways, but, this is what works for me. I think it is pretty cool and handy trick to know!