Introduction to Smartphone Photography at the WEA was a fun course to do. I’d become used to just snapping photos and hoping they would turn out okay. Now I have a better idea of framing and balance, focus and editing. Our tutor introduced us to an editing app called Snapseed which has lots of choices for editing. I had fun adding frames and text to my photos.

I experimented with artistic effects. The original of the photo below (left) has quite a busy background which I wanted to de-emphasise. I managed to do that by using the ‘Vintage’ tool in Snapseed. It ‘mutes’ the background while bringing out the colour of the daffodils.

On the way home from the course yesterday, I took a photo in Ballantynes’ china department. I cropped it in Snapseed and added a Vintage style (left) which seems to suit the subject. Then I tried it with the Retrolux effect (middle). Today I took a photo of flowers on a kōwhai tree in my backyard, cropped it, erased a distracting feature, and added a frame and text.

I hope I continue to experiment, but I can see it becoming time consuming and a little obsessive if I’m not careful!