Month: September 2016

Dave

There’s a spot near my BART station where bike messengers gather. One guy seems to be in charge. He’s older than most, and has an ex-military bearing. We once had a nice chat in line at the adjacent coffee kiosk. I imagine one day I’ll run afoul of a messenger, and just as I’m about to get clocked with a U-lock, The General will step through the haze of pot smoke and say, “Stand down, rider. This one’s okay.”

My mobile photo editing workflow

Dave


Although I carry a camera around my neck pretty much whenever I’m outdoors, I still take photos with my iPhone, especially if I know I want to share them right away. My workflow may not suit everyone, but I’ve spent years perfecting it.

  1. Shoot the photo in the native iPhone camera app. 
  2. Run it through the Perfectly Clear app, which often does something. 
  3. Upload to Snapseed to crop and edit basic things like exposure and contrast.
  4. Use the Snapseed Transform feature, altering vertical and horizontal perspective to make it look unnatural and bad.
  5. Undo.
  6. Save to Camera Roll. Or Favorites. Or is it Moments?
  7. Upload the saved photo to the VSCO app.
  8. No, not that one. The other one.
  9. Repeat step 7.
  10. Try every filter. 
  11. Try them again.
  12. Go back to the one that looked good. 
  13. Which one looked good?
  14. Repeat steps 6 and 7.
  15. Determine that I like none of the filters and revert to the original, which now somehow seems lacking.
  16. Post to Facebook and/or Tumblr and/or  Flickr and/or my blog, based on vague and ill-defined criteria.

Give it a try!