My Current Photo Process

In response to some comments on my March 2015 Photos post I thought I'd share a little about my current photo process. It's changed a bit since I upgraded my phone, and I'm settling into a new routine.

I'm really quite keen on using my phone as my main camera for several reasons. One, I always have it with me and as they say, the best camera is the one you have with you. Two, it's super easy to do post-processing on the phone, on the go and photo-by-photo. Having to get photos off my camera onto my computer, import them into Lightroom, do whatever I need to in there and then export to whatever place I need the final photo now seems like simply too much work, unless I know I'll be shooting a lot of photos for a special event or trip. For daily photography it doesn't get much better than your camera phone. That's my two cents.

I have a Moto G, which is by no means a top of the line phone, but is still a drastic upgrade from my previous phone and I'm quite happy with it. But I honestly believe that regardless of your camera specs you can take great photos. You may not be able to print them out poster size, but for general use one point and shoot is going to be pretty similar to the next point and shoot. And depending on circumstances I can even take photos to rival our more fancy camera. Your know-how is going to affect your photos a lot more than your camera.

I generally aim to take at least one photo a day. I don't always reach this goal, but I reach it often enough and some days I take more, so in the end it evens out. If you have Dropbox installed on your phone I believe it will automatically sync your photos from your phone gallery to your Dropbox account, which you can then access from the web or your computer if you have Dropbox installed. This works fantastically for me if I'm taking a photo I want to use immediately in a blog post, since the photo will just magically show up on my computer without my need to wrestle with cords, etc. If I have to use a cord then I feel that I'm being seriously inconvenienced. I need the magic of wireless. It doesn't seem like a big deal, but it is, and the cord will totally keep me from finishing a project.

Of course, I do usually prefer to do a little editing to my photo before sharing. My go-to editing program is VSCO Cam. The main thing to realize with VSCO is that you need to import a photo before editing, it won't just pull in your photos automatically. You can pull in one at a time within the app, or if you're browsing in your phone gallery you can just select all the ones you want and then import into VSCO.

VSCO has several free filters that you can apply to you photos. They also sell filter collections, which I've considered purchasing, but I'm still a bit overwhelmed with all the free options and pretty content. But it's nice to know if I get bored, I can spice things up a little. You can decrease the strength of the filter once you've applied it, which I generally take advantage of. I rarely leave the filter at full volume.

VSCO also has tons of settings for creating your own photo effect. There are so many, it's a bit overwhelming, but I will often up the brightness on my photo a notch or two before applying a filter. Another great feature of VSCO is that you can apply the same filter to multiple photos. This is great if you're working on a series of photos and want them all to be the same.

Once you're done editing in VSCO you'll need to export your photos, like you would in Lightroom. You can export direct to Instagram if you want to share, or you can export to Dropbox so they show up magically everywhere.

VSCO has it's own social aspect which I don't use at all. I use Instagram for all my social photo needs. I love Instagram. I have 100% abandoned Facebook in favor of Instagram. It's much less overwhelming and cute cats.

At the end of the month I'll collect all my photos from my Dropbox folder and sort them into folders on my computer, and upload photos to Flickr. I'm still roughly using this old system I shared.

So basically:

1. Take a photo.
2. Import and edit in VSCO Cam.
3. Share to Instagram (optional).
4. Export from VSCO Cam to Dropbox.
5. End of the month photo organizing and upload to Flickr.
6. Your beautiful life captured.

Instasize is another great option for editing your photos. The most important thing I'm looking for when editing my photos is a good brightness adjustment, which is included. Instasize also has lots of fun filters to apply to your photo. They also make it easy to crop your photo to whatever social media platform you plan to share on. Some really fun background patterns are included as well in case you want to get creative with your photo layout before posting to Instagram or elsewhere. Overall it's a fun and easy app to use. The Apple version has even more features available.

That was a pretty fast and loose post. Let me know if you have any questions, or if you have a favorite photo app. I'm always looking for something new.