Photography & Software Notebook

photography  ·  software  ·  working notes

What can you learn about images when your camera is a phone and your time is limited? That question sits behind every page in this notebook.

Photography and software are the two tools I use most outside teaching and writing. This section of My Daily Journal is a working notebook for both.

Who these notes are for

I shoot with a phone and, now and then, a borrowed mirrorless camera. I edit on a Windows machine, using free and low-cost software. This is not a gear-review channel: it is the perspective of someone who cares about images but works with limited equipment and limited time.

+------------------------------+
| 1. SHOOT                     |
| a phone, or now and then a   |
| borrowed mirrorless camera   |
+------------------------------+
       |
       v
+------------------------------+
| 2. EDIT                      |
| on a Windows machine         |
+------------------------------+
       |
       v
+------------------------------+
| 3. NOTE IT DOWN              |
| what actually worked, here   |
| in the notebook              |
+------------------------------+
       |
       v
+------------------------------+
| 4. EXPLAIN IT PROPERLY       |
| a step-by-step tutorial,     |
| when it is worth one         |
+------------------------------+

What you will find here

• Photo editing: what actually works in Lightroom, Snapseed, VSCO and open-source alternatives.
• Software notes: tools I use for productivity, writing and teaching (Notion, Obsidian, VS Code and others).
• Tutorials: step-by-step guides, when I find something worth explaining properly.
• Gear notes: honest observations, not sponsored opinions.

What is published so far

Not all of that list is written up yet. Here is what you can read today, in two shelves.

Photography tutorials

If you are new to editing, start with The Basic Terms in Photography Explained. Once you understand brightness, exposure, white balance and the tone curve, you can open any editor and see what each slider is really doing. The lessons then build on one another, in this order:

• Photography 01: Exposure and Brightness
• Photography 02: Contrast and Tonal Separation
• Photography 03: Tone Curve Foundations
• Photography 04: Gentle S-Curves
• Two-minute lesson 01: Recover sky detail

Why spend so long on exposure and curves? A raw file keeps the data from the camera’s sensor with as little loss as possible. That is why large corrections, such as brightening an underexposed picture, leave fewer visible artefacts on a raw file than on an already-processed JPEG (Wikipedia: Raw image format). So far, the lessons use DxO PhotoLab 10 rather than the apps listed above. It is a paid raw editor for Windows and macOS that DxO released on 1 September 2026, with a 30-day free trial (DxO announcement). In the interest of transparency: I am a DxO ambassador. As each lesson states, DxO did not write them, and no approval by DxO is implied.

Every lesson is collected under Photography Tutorials, and some have a companion video on my Treasure Hunters Digital channel on YouTube.

Software guides

• The Neurodivergent Writer’s Toolkit: What Actually Works
• WordPress Remote Control and Publishing Automation Tools
• Building My Own Job Lead Automation System
• How I Built a Reliable Voice-to-Sheet Transcription Automation System

Obsidian, one of the tools in the list above, appears in the toolkit post. These guides are collected under Software Guides.

The takeaway: if you are starting out, begin with the basic terms and then take the lessons in order. I write these notes for myself as much as for anyone else. If they help you, that is a bonus. Browse every Photography and Software post.

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