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By bethany (dreadlock girl), August 4, 2009 10:50 pm

1.) Don’t Get Lazy and think you’ll fix it later. try to take the best images you can in the moment, not leaving the dirty work to do on the computer. I have a theory that no matter how amazing digital cameras are, they are breeding a generation of lazy and tech heavy photographers. Don’t trade good technique and hard work for technology.

2.) Free photo editing online. I have fallen deeply in love with Picnik, it is a photo editing program that I have used for many an image. I just use it online. I paid the extra enabeling me to edit and change all that I please, but before I paid for the Picnik Premimum the freebe served me well too.

Here is the image you may recognize as my header image for the Dreadlock Girl main blog, with some changes and fixin’s done. With photo editing, you can do so much, you can make your own header, work with your own images by putting text in them, or the year on your kids shots.

Below is a screenshot of the final Dreadlock Girl header image, I love playing with Picnik! Make sure you check it out, you surely don’t want to be in the dark any longer. And you no longer have the excuse that you don’t know where to find the software. Picnik is excellent and very much pop-up free. There are small adds up at the top if you have not purchased the Premium Picnik, but they are not annoying. Picnik on!

3.) Don’t toss your shots too soon! switch them to B&W or sepia and that really can hide many mistakes, saving some photos from the rubbish bin, maybe even having them end up some of your favourites. An error with the light meeter, bad colouring and so many more unpredictable blunders may be blended and made invisible in B&W, as long as the image is good and sharp…try it!

4.) The more you edit, the more your image quality decreases. Yes, sadly this is true, unless you are working in RAW. I don’t work with RAW because they take so much more space than any of the other formats, and because I don’t like to edit that much it really doesn’t matter. So with every colour change and edit, just beware of your image quality.

5.) Try not to mess. This last one is all personal opinion, maybe because I am a little old school, maybe because I like to try and get it right the first time, but it is how I feel. When I take a shot, if the sky is white, it is white, if I am lucky it will be blue, but I don’t input a blue sky into my picture to make it better. Maybe more than anything I don’t like messing around with those kinds of details. I like taking pictures, editing is probably my least favourite. I only try to fix my mistakes, salvage some shots…and besides that: nothing.

Make sure you check in next Wednesday for Dreadlock Girl Photography Tips!!

I always love answering questions for readers. I’d love ideas on future Dreadlock Girl Photography Tips sessions if you have them. Leave me a comment, I love hearing from you!

Previous Dreadlock Girl Photography Tips:
The Basics
Capture Real People, In Real Life Shots
Work That Thing! How to Get the Best Shots
Tips for Group Shots: How to Shoot a Group Session Like You Know What You’re Doing!

Dreadlock Girl Photography Tips: I am going to do several of these posts, I am not a professional photographer by a long shot, but I love taking pictures and seeing beautiful pictures so I want to share what I have learned with you.