Just a Photoshoppin' fool

The bane of my existence as creative director of GenQ is photography, my own as well as everybody else's. And this is mainly due to the fact that I have absolutely no freaking idea what I am doing. I do have a simpleton's understanding of aperture and shutter speed, but I can never seem to make that "knowledge" work together to produce a decent photograph. And in the magazine business, we often have to use photos taken by even less knowledgeable people, and the assumption is that I, in my infinite  wisdom as a graphic artist whose degree came from the University of Looking It Up In A Book One Time When I Had A Free Minute At Lunch, will be able to "fix" it.

So last night, on a lark, I started looking up Photoshop tutorials on Pinterest. Apparently, I had a free minute, even though it wasn't lunch. I take all tutorials, tips, and instructions found on Pinterest with a grain of salt, because basically you are just looking at someone else's Post-It notes: "Remember to maybe look at this sometime! If I have a free minute during lunch!" But, miraculously, I found a couple things that seemed to actually work. And, boy, is improving photographs addicting:

Not that any of these are perfect, mind you. (Except I really love that birdhouse one.) These go quite a bit beyond my usual boost-the-exposure-and-maybe-the-contrast-or-the-vibrance-or-both-depending-on-my-mood-and-how-bad-I-need-to-pee method.

But so far, none of these experiments has worked on photographs of quilts! Embroidery? Oh, hells, yes:

But the quilt shots I've tried to improve so far have been a big bust. So, this is now my Holy Grail: gorgeous, popping quilt shots.

I'm gonna need a bigger lunch.