Humble Pie

I was all set to write a post disagreeing with certain advice from photography experts when I discovered while making my visual aids that the problem wasn't what I thought it was.  Also, that the experts were right, and I was wrong.

I've seen several posts by people saying the most important rule to remember in photography is to always have a camera.  They all say even if it's just your phone, have a camera with you at all times because you never know when you'll have an opportunity for a great shot.  So I took that advice to heart and was using my phone camera whenever it was inconvenient to carry around my bulky (but awesome) DSLR camera.  But I found when I tried to make photo gifts from those pictures that the resolution was too low and they didn't work (or so I thought).

So I started a new photo project to demonstrate what happens when you try to use a low resolution photo.

I love this photo, the colors really pop and it looks absolutely wonderful on my phone so I was exceedingly disappointed that I wouldn't be able to use it.

But then I pulled down a photo from my DSLR camera and was all set to show how nice it looked, when I ran into the exact same issue.  I nearly panicked for a moment thinking I'd never be able to make a nice photo gift again.  But I'd made lots before and never had this problem.  I love giving photo gifts to my family and was a bit freaked out.  

I took a deep breath and realized the common denominator in how I'd loaded both of the photos.  My phone is set up to automatically back up to Google Photos, and I loaded the DSLR photo into Google Photos for ease of transferring it from the external hard drive where we house our photos onto my laptop.  So I realized that the resolution issue was a result of downloading the photos from Google Photos and then uploading them to the photo site.  

Then I had a eureka moment and thought perhaps if I pulled the photos directly off my phone and uploaded them to the photo site, I'd be able to use them in photo gifts.  So I tried and here's what I got.

The colors and resolution are perfect.  It wasn't the phone camera causing the problem.  My first feeling was elation that I really can use my phone as a legitimate backup camera.  My second feeling was humility that I had the audacity to think that I knew more than the experts posting on photography sites.  Although I suppose that realizing I make mistakes and can be wrong at times is actually a good growth experience.

So, lessons learned:

• Dig deeper if experts tell me something and I think they're wrong.  I'm not saying they're never wrong, but if several people with experience are saying it, I'm probably wrong.
• Always upload photos either directly from the camera or put them on a thumb drive to transfer to another computer.
• The experts are also right that equipment isn't the most important thing in photography.  Good composition and exposure settings in any camera can result in a nice photo.
• Don't think so highly of my own opinion!