Author: Joel Heffner

Improve photos for free…

Garden photos, as well as all other photos, can benefit with some degree of enhancement. PhotoShop is the go to app for professionals. You can subscribe to it on the Adobe site. However, if you aren’t interested in the many ways you can enhance a photo with PhotoShop you may be interested in a very good alternative that is free…if you are using a Mac. Sorry, Windows users needed continue reading this.

The alternative is the build-in Preview app. It automatically opens if you click on an image. Here’s what it looks like when you click on an image.

Doesn’t look like much…yet.

When you click on Tools, you get another menu that looks like this.

Now, it’s getting interesting.

If you click on Adjust Size, you can alter the size of the image. Nice, but not what I’ve got in mind. Clicking on Adjust Color takes you to the promised land…so to speak.

Here you can alter photos quickly and easily. My favorite control is Saturation. I’m not going to ruin in for you by showing you what happens. If you’ve got a Mac try it…you’ll be very happy. I promise.

Your flowers will look a lot different…and better. No kidding.

And the answer is…

For those wondering what the object I posted yesterday really is. Here’s a better picture of it.

Before there were washing machines, people used washboards to clean their clothes…down by the stream or river.

Find anything in your backyard?

When the snow melted from this winter, I noticed something standing in the backyard. I had to take a picture of it. Do you have one of these?

I’ll tell you what it is, if you do not recognize it, tomorrow. 🙂

The most important thing…

When it comes to garden photography, the most important thing is light! Things look different at various times of the day. Try a little experiment. Take pictures of the same thing…at different times of the day. Compare them.

Try it.

It’s winter! Yay!

It’s winter time. That’s the best time of year to become a better garden photographer. No, I’m not nuts. (Well…maybe a little.) What I mean is that winter is a good time to learn and develop your photo skills so you’ll be ready when it gets warmer and you’ll be outdoors more.

Here’s the best tool I’ve found.

It’s a fake flower. There’s no limit to what you can do with a fake flower.

Get one…and try it.

From plain to funky…

Sometimes, you take a photograph and it looks plain…like this one.

So, you look for a way to jazz it up a little. I opened up the Insta Toon app on my iPhone and with a couple of clicks the plain flower pot was turned into a funky flower pot.

Experiment with apps. Like me, you won’t like all of them. However, for a few dollars, I think it’s worth exploring.

The easiest post processing trick…

It was a bit after seven in the evening and I was in the yard. I noticed this…

Cute, but nothing to write home about.

And then I used the easiest post processing trick. One that can be done within your smartphone or with just about any photography app.

I cropped it.

And now it looks like this…

Simple. Effective. What more could you ask for?

Move in closer…keep moving in!

The best way to improve your garden photos is very easy. Here’s an example.

I was standing in the backyard and saw some flowers. They didn’t seem like much. I took this picture.

I walked a little bit closer and took this photo.

Finally, I got serious and moved next to them and took this.

It was worth bending down.

MOVE IN CLOSER!!!!

The easiest garden photo tip…

Some photo tips are difficult to implement. This one is really easy…and very important. So important that it is often overlooked. Here’s the lens of my iPhone.

iPhone XR Lens

It’s important to look at it often because it can (and does) get dirty in the garden. Your hands can rub on it and get soil on it. Sometimes, you can’t see it, but it happens. Cleaning off the lens can help you get sharper pictures. Easy. Fast. Helpful.

Enjoy (a cleaner lens).

“There are four butterflies!”

When my wife calls and says “There are four butterflies on the flowers…” I know it means that I better get a camera. Although my iPhone is great, it doesn’t work will at this distance for small butterflies. That’s why I keep my old point-and-shoot Canon PowerShot SX 260 HS handy. It has a great zoom…if you can hold it still. The “solution” at least for me is to shoot plenty of photos and hope you get a few good ones. Here’s the one I like the best.

The butterfly probably came from my wife’s caterpillar nursery
that she’s been feeding this summer.