Making the most of isolation

Chaos comes in waves. You choose: drown in the chaos or ride the wave.

Personally, I find time wasted, as simply that: moments of opportunity that will never repeat. So during this blessing of free time, I’ve found tasks that have been waiting for my attention.

Like so many of you, I love snapping phone camera pics while on any trip — short or long. As my camera setting is to maximum pixels (yes, the downside to this setting is that it gobbles up a HUGE amount of memory in my phone.) So, it’s necessary to upload these pics often and then clear them from my phone. Sometimes, I’m better organized and they end up in specific TITLED folders. Sometimes, they’re dumped in dated files that require sorting and re-evaluation.

The joy is in taking those RAW pics and turning them into keepers. I use both Paint and Canva to get the desired results.

This ONE picture became all these shown below.
Front view, framed, expanded, then cropped.
The coffee pot over the fire was on the far right of the original and was later cropped out.
Winch & pulley system handing on the side of the buckboard.
Focused on the rope and flat seat for the buckboard.

One RAW photo becomes (4) very specific pictures that I can use for graphic inlays. Best of all, these finalized designs are ALL mine. I never need to worry about copyrights.

I took a recent trip – BC, which stands for in this case Before Covid – to the Fort Worth Japanese Gardens and utilized RAW photos into specific framed and capturing final proofs.

This becomes . . .
Individual, center and cropped.
Individual, fully open.
A full flowering tree, which is beautiful but distant
Becomes the focal point of the frame.
And a walkway into an area, with loads happening in the background becomes
A specific and enticing graphic for advertising and marketing purposes.

So the next time you upload your RAW phone photos, look at what is captured section-by-section. Focusing on the individual elements of a photo can help you develop an extensive library of usable graphics. Again — the Copyright is all yours.

If you’re like me and sitting still and doing NOTHING isn’t your ideal way to thrive during this period of isolation, delve into your older save ‘photo’ files and experiment.

Background was cropped from a picture that I took over a lake in Arkansas. Designed in Canva.com
Again, the background came from one of my own photos taken from a mountain-view angle. Designed in Canva.com

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