After months with iPhoto on my computer, I visited Apple last weekend for a 30 minute appointment to find out how it actually works.  Okay, I should have figured it out myself. But with just that brief tutorial behind me, I thought it would be fun to show you what a rank amateur can do to change a photograph to make it better than the original.

Here is my original photograph taken on a drive to Harrisonville:

It isn’t rocket science that I should never take a photograph through my car window.  But the roads were really muddy and there was a car coming up behind me.  So I just stopped the car, quickly took this shot, and moved my car before the driver behind me reached the bridge.

With “quick fixes”, I was able to crop the photograph to eliminate the hood of my car from the photograph:

After reframing the snapshot, I moved to “adjust” to enhance the color and sharpen the photograph.  Here is the result of tweaking with the “adjust” options:

Nothing magical about the changes, but every step toward better photographs is a step in the right direction.