Flipping Rocks

When I was a kid, I was outdoors a lot. My friends and I were always exploring places in the woods, creeks, etc. It was awesome. One thing we often did was get in a stream and try to catch crawdads, tadpoles, and all those sorts of things. We discovered over time that they often hid under rocks.

So we would stand slightly downstream and then flip the rocks over to see what came out. We held an empty coffee can right there and pretty often, whatever came out swam right into our can. It was a great system (though my Mom grew tired of me bringing all these creatures home).

When I started editing photos, I often thought of the whole “flipping rocks” approach. Don’t know what a tool does? Try it. Flip that rock and see what’s under it. Sure you can Google it, but it’s better to get your hands on it first and try it yourself. Roll up your sleeves and dig in.

I did this a lot in my early days, in a lot of apps, as I was learning the art of editing photos. It was just me teaching myself with no help, and there is no better way to learn than to just do it yourself. So I flipped a lot of rocks, and learned a lot about photo editing in the process. (Note: I am still flipping rocks, and learning, today.)

I think this is a very valuable way to learn something. Sure, I make a lot of videos showing tips and tricks in various apps -and I sincerely hope that it’s helpful - but the best way to learn is just to try it yourself.

Take one of your photos and try different tools and sliders on it to see what they do. Regardless of the app you are using, you will pretty quickly discover what is happening to the photo when you move a slider. If it isn’t clear after a few practice sessions, then Google it. Just don’t start with Google. You will learn it better if you try and figure it out by using it.

I feel like this is the key thing that helped me improve my photo editing. I just tried stuff, and tried it again and again, on different pictures, until I felt like I truly understood it. I didn’t really even know about Youtube back then, so this was the only way that I knew to learn something - and it worked. 

What rocks can you flip today?