Edit Your Photos!

I'm not a professional photographer. Nor do I claim to be an artist. But even I know a lousy photo when I see one -- and the internet is littered with them. Cropping and retouching is an easy way to greatly improve any photo. Here's an example:




The original photo is fine but has a few obvious flaws:

• The statue looks far away. The details of the face on the aren't clearly visible.
• It has a modern glass window and a pink sign in the background.
• It's perfectly centered, which is generally wrong for portraits. See the Rule of Thirds
  

A tight crop -- using the Rule of Thirds -- removes the unwanted background, and draws your focus to the statues' eye. A little sharpnening exposes the stone's rough texture on the face and neck. Increasing the color saturation highlights the discoloration caused by years of weathering.

Total editing time: five minutes. Cost of software (gimp): zero.