A simple trick for better pictures

Whenever I'm browsing someones blog or when I just see pictures in general, my mind automatically begins to critic the photos. Is is good? Is it striking? How does it make me feel? Could it be improved?

 I can't help it.  Photography is on my mind almost non-stop so it just happens automatically. I'm certainly not trying to be judgmental, it's more because if the photography is good I want to analyze why it's so good and if the photography is bad I want to determine how to improve it.

One of the most common "offenses" of so-so photography has got to be that the picture doesn't pop. It looks too drab. Not drab because of lack of color per se, but drab due to the lack of light or brightness. Often times if a person will slightly increase the exposure or brightness while editing, it will be a dramatic improvement.

Here's an example...The picture below is straight out of the camera. It's not necessarily awful, but in my opinion it's missing a little somethin' somethin', if ya know what I mean. It looks a little drab and just doesn't pop.

So the only thing I did was increase the brightness in Lightroom. (oh, and I added a little bit of vignetting.) Better, huh?

It's doing small little changes like this that can really improve your pictures. 

On a side note: I also like to play around with presets in Lightroom to try something different. I altered the following pictures by applying the "rounded corner" preset and the "lilac love" preset receptively.

Happy improving...