This weeks Prompts.

4. A Reflection Of Me    5. Ensemble   6. Where I Stand    7. Solitude   8. My Gear    9. Multifaceted     10.Habit
  4. A Reflection Of Me—and Laylabug, and my cow creamers, in the window over the sink….

 5. Ensemble—Monday morning and the gang’s all here!
6. Where I Stand—Ah, work.

 7. Solitude—Pushing the interpretation a bit, but quilting is a solitary endeavor most of the time…(don’t tell Neko that)

8. My Gear  –Once I was able to get the cat OFF of the fabric for a bit. My FIRST finish of the year!!!

9. Multifaceted—Tough prompt. I had a bunch of ideas. I had my phone with me while putting my makeup on. (And, NO, you may NOT see the SOC versions of these images, thank you very much!) I took 4 photos, put them in a collage via the app FOTOR, edited the bunch together, and then used the app PicsArt and the editing option Pop Art. I saved the first version, which took the four-square collage and multiplied it, and then ran THAT copy through the pop art edit again to get the 16 squares.

10. Habit  My daughter and I have a habit of HGTV and nails. I am a bit obsessive about glitter at the moment because it doesn’t chip. I have a bad habit of noticing any tiny imperfection in my unpainted nail, and then fussing with it until I ruin them. So, nail polish is a must. But I work with my hands, so chipping is bad!

This entire week was taken on the iPhone. It is with me, it is convenient and it’s camera is pretty good. But, straight out of the camera (SOC), most of these images would have been less than stellar, some might not even approached so-so. Except for the magic of apps. If you have a smart phone, you can get apps to do almost anything. There are some that cost $$, some that are free. I don’t think I have ever spent more than $2 on something—unless it was upgrading from a free to paid app, after it had proven itself worthwhile.

(Everything I state past this point is for APPLE products– iTunes, iPhone, iPad. I know NOTHING about any other operating systems, except that generally there is an option that will be close in Android)

The iPhone comes with a pretty decent camera. The latest upgrade on the camera itself provides you the ability to really modify and play with your photos. Before you post a photo to social media, you should at least play with the camera edit options that are available to you; you will be pleasantly surprised. One of the joys of Instagram is the power of the app. Rarely is something posted without some post-processing

Astonishing things can be done. If you look at my photos of the day, 2014, anything with CY365 in the upper left corner and ©Trish Casey-Green at the bottom was probably my phone. If I created a meme from the photo, chances are I took the photo and did all the editing on my iPhone. (Occasionally, I may have emailed myself a photo from my Canon and played on phone—like with the full moon. You just can’t take a good moon shot with a phone.) For the most part, I couldn’t tell you which app I used; they are somewhat like potato chips, you can’t buy just one…But, you can delete them from your phone easier than getting rid of potato chip weight.

A really good photo editing app to start with, because it is intuitive and it is free, and does most of the things you should want to do, is Snapseed.

There are any number of font apps; there are some that edit and do words as an extra trick, but I not really a fan. My go-to app for writing on my photos is PHONTO. (free or $1.99, I don’t recall) And, I use it in a pretty straight-forward fashion; I believe it is stronger than I know.

Why am I telling you this? I have a dSLR camera, Photoshop Elements, Lightroom; and I use my phone for a LOT of my photography! I will be going out to the Grand Canyon next month. Most definitely, my camera gear will be at least as important as my clothing choices. However, expect to see some iPhone selfies along the way!

The camera IS an IMPORTANT part of a good photo…. but the EYE of the PHOTOGRAPHER is far more important…pre and post processing…

(I LOVE comments, people, comments!!! CONNECT with me this year!!!)

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Prompts are from CY365!