Making the most of your digital photos

People use digital cameras to document important moments in life, yet rarely are such masterpieces printed and shown around. Rachel has some clever ideas to make your photos so special, you won’t want to keep them to yourself.

I recently came across my photos from a trip toBrazilI took three years ago. I was there for six months, took 2,000 photographs, and nobody but my travel companion has seen them. I was just using a simple point and click digital Canon camera but some of the shots turned out really well, even if I do say so myself. I suddenly realised what a shame it was I hadn’t shared them with my friends and family.

The beauty of digital photography is that you can take the same photo many times without wasting film, and even the simplest digital camera can help you to take an excellent photo using inbuilt motion and light sensors. It’s so easy to share digital photos – you can email them to friends, upload them to Facebook, put them on your website, or even whip up a slideshow and hold a viewing night. However, most of our incredible shots languish on our hard drives, never to see the light of day. So, what can you do about it?

These days your phone is the camera you always have with you. These apps are designed to help you edit and share your photos directly from your phone – no computers or printing involved.

App: Instagram
Platform: iPhone, soon to be Android
Price: Free
Details: Instagram is a very basic, but very beautiful, app for editing and sharing your photos. You take your photo, apply one of the preset filters Instagram offers (which, for example, can give your photo a sepia or technicolour flair) and then use the most powerful aspect of Instagram – the photo sharing network. You sign up for the network, upload your tweaked photograph, and then all of your friends can see your Instagram albums – provided they too have signed up for the app.

App: Camera+
Platform: iPhone
Price: $0.99
Details: Camera+ is a more advanced camera app for your iPhone. Instead of selecting the regular camera application on your phone, you use this app to take the photo. It’s relatively simple to use, but my favourite feature is that you can manually set the focus. Instead of having to walk back and forward to try and get the foreground or background in focus, you just tap on the object on the screen and this app will pull the focus to that point in the photo. Clever? I think so.

App: Photo Effect
Platform: Android
Price: $2.99
Details: This app has similar features to Instagram – you can edit your photos using the inbuilt filters, and then share them with your friends online.


Click NEXT to find out how to share your photos online