Add some PEP to your photography with the 5-minute edit (Blog #23)

Welcome to my latest blog, which today is showing you an easy work flow for taking (P)photographs, (E)editing your photographs, and then (P)posting and sharing your photographs on social media, all done using your smartphone, and all whilst you're on the go, and all in 5-minutes!

I'll talk a little about getting your composition as good as you can before you go to editing; my 7-step simple Snapseed editing work flow; and finally, sharing to your followers on social media. It is perhaps worth saying that you're going to need a decent photo to begin with before you start the editing process. You can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear.

Two themes of the modern world are convenience and speed, and these are also the themes of this blog. What could be more convenient than taking, edited, and posting photographs all using something you probably have with you for most of your day, every day? What I am going to show you is how to make this whole process speedy without compromising the final product.

When lining up to take a photograph, there are three things I like to try to get right in camera:

1. Composition, which is basically choosing a scene in which all the various elements look aesthetically pleasing. I don't like crowded frames, to me, less is more;

2. Rule of thirds, which is a useful tool for constructing a pleasing composition. All the books will give you advice about placing your subject at the intersections of a 3 by 3 grid, placing the horizon on one of the horizontal thirds, but whilst you should know about the rule of thirds, don't be a slave to it. Experimentation will make you a better photographer;

3. Finally, I like as far as possible to get the horizontal horizontal, but this can sometimes be tricky.

I shoot in RAW and JPEG, and will most times use the RAW image to work on because there is more data in RAW than there is in JPEG, so more scope to play with the photograph.

 

The colour photo below is the straight-out-camera photograph I will be talking about. I had previously taken numerous photos of jetties around various lakes in the Lake District, but most were cliche views, looking straight along the jetty to the water. This black and white photo below is one I took of exactly the same jetty as in the colour photo, but several years ago. Fairly unimaginative, wouldn't you say?

Placing myself at one side of the jetty, and lowering my camera, I was able to capture verticals more than I could have ever done in the previous photo. Also, the structure of the wooden post in the foreground is obviously more prominent than in the previous image, and all the posts add another dimension to the overall composition.

Once I had taken the photograph I decided that this shot had editing potential; I therefore shared it to Snapseed, my favourite, free, easy-to-use photography editing app. 

This is what the Snapseed screen looks - minus my highlight numbers, obviously! I added the numbers to help you follow my seven stage work flow.

My first edit was to check the horizontal, which as I mentioned earlier isn't always the easiest thing to get right in camera, and correct it if necessary (1).

Next, I considered the composition and played around with various crop options. This is where you can eliminate peripheral, unwanted things, place your subject where you want them, and generally improve the overall composition. You also get to choose the aspect ratio of your finished photo, that is the ratio of the vertical and horizontal dimensions. I used to select 5:4, but more recently I have moved more in favour of square or 1:1 because my photography just looked better, and the size woks well with most social media channels, especially Instagram (2).

Tuning the image allows you to change its brightness, the contrast, saturation, ambiance, the highlights and shadows, and the warmth. I usually hit the little magic wand, which automatically does all of those for you, and which I find usually does a pretty good job. You can of course manually alter all of the above yourself (3).

The next edits are to structure and sharpness, which I tend to enhance, but in the case of structure, not too much as this can create a fake-looking photograph (4).

Cameras struggle to authentically replicate 'white', but this is correctable in the white balance function, by altering the temperature and/or tint, but I tend to hit the AW icon along the bottom row, which corrects temperature and tint automatically. Again, you can alter these yourself if you'd prefer. I initially hit the AW icon, but this warmed the image up more than I wanted, so I dialed it back a touch (5).

I sell some of my photography on Picfair, which doesn't accept images with frames or your name across it, so I save my photo to my Google Photos cloud at this point. Once saved, I then return to my final edits.

At this point I like to add a frame, which if you're posting on, say Instagram, will help to make your photography stand out from the crowd (6).

Finally, it's a good idea to sign your work, so I add 'Mike Young's Photography' and tuck it away, usually in one of the bottom corners. This won't stop an unscrupulous person stealing your image, but it might just make them think twice as they're more likely to regard you as a serious photographer.

Once you're happy with your edited photograph, it's time to share it with your followers on social media by hitting the share symbol in the top right of the screen.

I share my photos on a number of social media channels, mainly on Instagram,  

but also on my own Facebook group, the dozen or so Facebook photography-related groups of which I am a member, on X, and on Threads (see below). 

So here's the photo I posted on social media. To me it has a nice composition even if I couldn't place my subject (the jetty) at any one intersections of the imaginary grid. There's a strong leading line that utilizes both horizontal and vertical components. It has a warmer feel than the original, and I have managed to create a hazier background, which gives the whole scene a slightly magical, ethereal feel. 

Have my edits created a better image? 

And then for a bit of fun, and with one press of a button in the Tools menu, I created a monochrome version, which I rather like. Do you? Why?

The whole process took me very little time at all, from taking the photograph, walking the hundred or so yards to the Lakeside Cafe Restaurant where I did my editing while my Flat White cooled down, to posting on social media. Take out the time it took to reach the cafe and you're probably talking less than 5-minutes. 

I hope you've enjoyed this run through of the creative process from clicking that shutter, editing, and sharing my smartphone photography. It's so convenient and quick, and very easy.

You can see more of my photography on my various social media channels:

Facebook - Mike Young's Photography 

Instagram - @mike.y.53 and @mike53onthemove

X - @MYPhotography53 and @Mike53onthemove

Threads - mike53onthemove and mike.y.53

© Mike Young 2024.