Disclaimers:

I can’t use photoshop.

My big camera photos are editing using Lightroom, mostly with presets.

My iPhone photos are edited using VSCO.

These are very very simple.

I am not a proper photographer…

The good news is that it means I can teach you my workflow very easily.

Definitions

My editing process is one of two things.

1. There are ‘tweaks’ where I adjust one aspect of the pictures at a time (brightness, contrast, clarity, temperature etc).

2. There are filters (VSCO) or presets (Lightroom) but they mean the same thing. These are where a clever photographer has put together lots of tweaks together that give a cohesive look to whatever picture they are applied to. Loads more on this later. I adore these and, if they are cheating, I absolutely don’t care. I couldn’t have got where I am without them. There are filters in Instagram but they are generally awful. I think I only know one person who makes these look good and that is Flora Shedden. She has three accounts, her own, the bakery and the Lon Store and I would know one of her photos anywhere. That is the beauty of a preset.

To save you asking, I think it is Gingham, but don’t quote me.

 Before we get to that though.  

Step I: Right first time

There isn’t much that editing can’t do, but that doesn’t mean it should.

Get as much right in the camera as possible, but remember, you probably haven’t seen an unedited nice photo online. The unedited ones will make you wince.

The top advice that I can’t take

Take a step back. Everything changes. The light, the composition, the context.

 I cannot do this because there is usually something very not on brand just out of shot. However, if you have a tidier house than me and you haven’t currently got the builders in, this is very good advice and it is well worth taking.

Step ii: Check your lines

Every single photo I take with my big camera is about 5 degrees on the wonk. I genuinely have no idea why. I have the grid activated on both camera and phone, and I use the back screen in live view (as opposed to looking through the viewfinder like an old school camera) and they are still off. With an image of flowers in the garden, it doesn’t matter, and with my usual portraiture spot, I seem to get it about right. But out and about, dreadful. Most noticeable if there are lines that are clearly meant to be straight, but you weren’t standing square on and you weren’t holding the camera/phone straight.

This is the first thing I correct. You will usually have to use a combination of rotation and skewing to get it absolutely square on. You’ll see from the example below that it can be a subtle change but make all the difference.

 In Lightroom

 Confusingly, how you adjust the skew in Lightroom isn’t anywhere near where the rotate tool is kept.

Go to the editing bar, scroll down to ‘Geometry’ and play with ‘vertical’ and horizontal’ until you get the lines parallel/perpendicular to the picture edges. Irritatingly, it is often a combination of vertical, horizontal and rotation that gets it right, but that be because I can take a picture that is wonky on all three dimensions.

 You might have to crop a tiny bit as skewing can leave white gaps.

In VSCO

Quick example in VSCO. So easy to see with buildings. This was lovely Cheltenham. I didn’t get the building completely straight up and down as it looked a bit distorted and I lost all the edges. (Check any internal lines as well as edges. When I got the sides of the building square, the steps were in a dreadful state.)

What I should have done was stand fifteen feet to the left. This just proves the rule that you should put a bit of effort into getting it right out of the camera. In my defence, I was running for a train.

Again, a combination of rotate, horizontal and vertical skew is used until it feels right. At least VSCO puts them all in the same place.

Asymmetry is different to wonkiness. I love asymmetry.

I also love playing with negative space, so have an experiment with cropping.

4:5 ratio short to long side for Instagram. 2:3 for everything else.

 Step iii: Brightness

If you are photographing anything moving, maximise the light so that things are a bit too bright, and then adjust in editing. This means that there is more of a chance of pictures being sharp.

A word of warning, you can take a black picture in very low light and brighten it in editing and you’ll probably get some of the detail back. Take an over bright, white picture and try and lower the brightness in editing and there will be nothing there. In old film terms, you’ve burned the film.

 If you have been here for any time at all, you’ll know that most of my pictures are dark, and I rarely take any pictures of anything moving. Even my dogs lie round a lot. And I don’t just darken (reduce the exposure) in editing. I take dark pictures.

To do this, you have to understand that your camera wants perfectly balanced images. I have absolutely no interest in what the science is behind this, but I imagine that they were aiming for what the human eye perceives. Just, sort of, normal. Firstly, this is boring and secondly, I wear sunglasses for nine months of the year. I want my world to be darker. But to do this, I have to let my camera know to go against its better instincts.

on a camera

 For my big camera, I turn down the exposure compensation. I have a dial on the top of my camera (Sony a7iii), it’s the one closest to the strap fastening, but a quick google will find out how you do yours.

On good days, I keep it at -0.3 (the negative number is darker. If I put it on +0.3, everything would be brighter. Yuck, but this is an option for you if this is your bag).

On days when I need a little cheering up, I put it on -0.7.

Again, there is probably a good technical reason why they are in these increments, but I don’t know and I don’t care. I found so much of confidence in photography is letting the camera do what it does and steering all the rest.

Four pictures, taken seconds apart on 0, -0.3, -0.7 & -1.

On a phone

 For a phone, hold your finger on the screen usually on the lightest part, here I tried the sunlight, and then tried it on the mirror, and then pull down for reducing exposure/making it darker.

 Step iv: Applying a preset/filter

As above, presets and filters are the same thing.

Presets tend to tend to be used where you can see all the settings because you press the button and all the settings ‘jump’ to the preset levels, and your photo changes. This has the same effect as a filter, but if you can’t see the settings, then it is as if you were putting a thin coloured sheet over your image, and shifting it that way. It all amounts to the same thing, a way of making your pictures look:

a) better (usually, you can go overboard) &;

b) the same.

In lightroom

Some examples. Firstly, of the same picture with different presets.

In Lightroom (used for this image, because it came out of my big camera), I tend to use either Krautkopf’s 10 because I like what it does to greens. If I run my curser down the presets, I get a preview of some of their other presets. This means we can see how the image changes. SAme picture, different aesthetic.

You can buy Krautkopf’s presets here, but I also recommend the Melias.

 Almost all of these are lovely because Krautkopf are wonderfully talented photographers and they are designed for gardeners. If you use other presets or filters, it can go horribly wrong though. For example, a preset that came already with Lightroom, CN1. A light hand with these is required.

To see how these can really help with consistency, multiple images same filter.

I find the one thing that really throws presets is greens. Tricky for someone who spends most of their time photographing plants and flowers. if it looks too luminous, just reduce the saturation (intensity of colour).

In VSCO

Oh so so simple.

Just import the photo, click the filter icon (it looks like a polaroid) and experiment with which filters suit you. I use only J1, J2, & J6 and I don’t even look at anything else. Maybe whack the exposure down even further if I am feeling wild, but that’s it.

The lesson is the same as with Lightroom. Play until you find the aesthetic you like and stick with it, come hell or high water.

And there you go.

Don’t worry if you can’t get to grips with either a big camera or you don’t have Lightroom, a phone and VSCO can get you a very long way indeed.