Use a program to manage your library. Don't rely on folder structure.
Windows by default will download your photos into My Pictures. You can tell it if you want a new photo and what you want the name to include. While this will work to get the pictures off of your camera it doesn't give you a way to visualize your photos in reference to events or any kind of timeline. It makes it very hard to browse your photos in a meaningful way. Photo management software makes it so much easier to find the pictures that matter in your library and usually has some features built in to allow you to edit your photos to make them the best they can be. I use iPhoto because I have a Mac. If you have Windows there is Picasa for the casual user that doesn't want to pay for something and Adobe Lightroom for the feature seeker. Lightroom is also available on the Mac as is Aperture.

Don't be afraid to edit your photos. Use the Duplicate feature to make a copy if you are worried about destroying your original photo.
  I am a fan of the untouched photo. I have my share of photos that were not edited at all. Those are fun to take and will jump out to you when you see them. There are other pictures that are awesome in their own right but they need a little editing to bring them to their full potential. Let your mind's eye do the lifting here. Remember what you saw in your head when you took the picture and do what you can to try to get to that. It is amazing how much you can change a photograph just by exploring a few possibilities.

Go back in your library periodically to look at your past pictures.
Sometimes upon first inspection I don't see the value in a specific shot. Many times this is because I was looking for something else when I initially looked at the group of photos. Sometimes when I go back and look at the pictures with a fresh perspective I will see something that I missed the first time. This is where some of my best shots have come from.

Increase the scale of your printed photos when necessary
It is harder to frame large pictures but some photos need to be printed on a larger scale to get the proper effect. This is up to your judgement. Always reference the Megapixel rating on your camera for how large your pictures should be blown up to.

Hopefully this will help you out a bit. Leave me a comment if you have any other hints.

J.R.

This post will focus on the lighting. Even cell phones with a flash will take oddly lit photos in low light. Cell phones do not have high quality lenses most of the time and the flash doesn't make enough light to evenly light the field. This will cause the closest objects to be washed out and the objects further away to be completely dark. So low light pictures don't make for good pictures with a cell phone. You also get granulation of the image which makes for an ugly end product.

Example
 

The background is completely unintelligible and the foreground is hazy.

This is not what you want. With the proper light you can really capture what you are trying to capture. The same camera captured this next example:

There is a noticeable difference here. There is enough light to capture the details of the subject. It is really that easy. The flash will make a difference but it will not fix poor conditions. It is a cell phone after all.

Many people say that cell phones are just for capturing moments but aren't for taking meaningful photos. That you shouldn't rely on that technology to take any picture that you care about. I don't agree with this. These pictures are posted to Flickr, MySpace and Facebook by the millions. If you take the time to think about the picture that you are taking you can get the best results possible.

One of my favorite Cell Phone pictures in two versions.

Tell me that picture wasn't worth editing. The cell phone is always with you and if you use it correctly you can get some great pictures that you wouldn't otherwise have the availability to capture.

Think about the conditions and do what you can to optimize them. With this post in mind if you are taking group pictures outside with a cell phone and it is a little dark try to position the group or yourself in a place with more light from a street light or something. Whatever you can do to make that picture better will be appreciated by all that view it. I am going to do more of these posts on other methods of optimizing cell phone photography.

Thanks for reading this and have a great day!

J.R.

This week I am participating in a Photography show as a fundraiser for a local Public Access network. It is featuring three of my photographs.

The White Bird

This picture is from the St. Louis Zoo Aviary. I love the composition of this shot and the subject is beautiful. I altered the colors to suit the photo.

The Window looking Up

This is a window in a building near the Capitol in Springfield Illinois. I was trying to use an extreme perspective to change the image and let the viewer come up with what they want to see. Patterns and shapes is what this image is all about. The window is secondary.

Nature vs Man

This is one of my early shots with my Nikon. I was trying to highlight the shape of the tree and show the difference in size of the building and the tree. I experimented in Sepia and made it work to my satisfaction.

These are all studies in composition and color. They all taught me what to do and what not to do to make my future pictures better. You can take a bad photograph of a beautiful thing just by forgetting the rules of good composition and no editing will recover your picture from that.

Until next time.

J.R.

This is the site of a new endeavor for me. Some of my favorite photographs are going to be for sale in print form. I am going to get this site up and going completely as soon as I can but if you see a photo that you like before everything is completely set up use the Contact Me page and send me the details including the size and I can quote you a price. This is a temporary setup of course. I hope to have an ECommerce setup and a payment gateway set up soon.

This journal will actually feature a picture either from the collection or one taken on the day of the post and the story associated with it in the future. As I said I am really working to get the site set up and functional at this point.

I will talk to you all very soon.

J.R.