Life Under the Bridge

A photo walk through Guadalupe River Park, San Jose
By: Jefferey Alan Wilson Sr.
                                                                           "I made it at TechShop"
http://www.techshop.com
                                                                                    3/22/2013

Introduction: I have lived in San Jose California my entire Life. It went from orchards to Silicon Valley during that time. Most people born after 1970 don't realize our agricultural heritage. I used to play in this creek when I was a kid. 

I have not visited this wonder of the merging of nature and man for over 50 years. This is the first time I have be back. So, this is my three day journey of 'Life Under the Bridge"

Step 1: The Park Has Life

Tools:

1). Cell phone
2). Bike
3). A good eye
4). FaceBook Page
5). paint program
6). CorelDRAW
7). TechShop Computer

Step 2: Taking the Shot

Step #2: There is an abundant amount of information out there on how to take a photograph. I'll give you some basic tips you may or may not already use.

                                                                                          TAKING PHOTOS 101

1). Clean the lens.
2). Have fun; don't try to bring a bunch of stuff to get 'the perfect shot'. I used my cell phone camera.
3). 'Frame' the shot. I your mind think about what the finished picture would look like in a picture frame. Look for interesting things around the object to actually boarder the subject matter.
4). Hold the camera steady and don't move around. This will make the photo out of focus.
5). If it's live action take the shot first, then set up for a better picture of your subject. I say this because how many times have we waited to get that action just right, then it passes us by quickly and we never got what we wanted and its gone forever.
6). Tell a story. Each frame should have its own little story with the entire layout. A good story teller has a beginning and middle and an end. A great story has a protagonist ( a hero) and an antagonist (a bad guy).
7). And finally how do you get your photos from your camera to your computer. There are different ways; but the most economical is a straight download front the camera to the computer via a USB cable or SIMM card. I just use the import photo command. Make sure you have created a folder to put your files into.

Step 3: CorelDraw and Photo Captions

Note; I'm going to skip over how to use FaceBook photos for the next chapter and use just one photo on this next step to show you how to bring a photo into an instructable with captions. However, let me say this: I love being at TechShop. Approximately 4 members helped me with little pointers to do this little task. If it wasn't for them I'd still be stuck reading the help menu on how to do it. Hold on to your hats and here we go.

  CorelDraw 101

Step #1: Layout your photo album in Facebook, then right click on the picture you want and hit >'copy menu'.

Step #2: Open CorelDraw and pull down> 'File New' and hit >OK. Don't worry about giving it a title.

Step #3: Upper left '>'Edit' > 'paste'. Then 'click on the picture' you just brought in 'right mouse click-hold' and >drag up to the left upper corner and release. 

Step #4: Go back to your FaceBook photo and 'Highlight any text' you wish to bring over for your caption, >Right click>'copy'

Step #5: Go Back to CorelDraw > select the 'text tool' way over to the left menu shaped like an 'A' and paste into the text field.

Step #6: The' text field' may go way past your photo. If it does get the 'select tool' shaped like an 'arrow' again over to the left (its the one on the top). Now grab one of the black boarder boxes in the outside middle and squeeze it all the way back onto the photo. If you do not do this, the conversion into a jpeg (picture fie) will read it as an image and make it part of the total photo. This creates an undesired white field boarder outside your photo. It looks out of balance and ugly.

Step #7: Now, we are still in CorelDraw; once again move over to the left tool bar, go seven icons down to the>'rectangle' icon and drag it over the 'entire photo and the text' to> 'create a frame'. The reason you are doing this is to capture the photo and the text as an image so you can save it as a jpeg and bring it over to the instructable. You can change the thickness of the line in the frame and color as well by going over to the pen tool.

Step #8: Here's a pretty cool trick my buddy Tom Gonzales here at TechShop just showed me: 'File'>'Export' - 'Export' being the key here. This step saves time in bouncing out of CorelDraw and into CorelPhoto to convert to a jpeg.

Step #9: 'Export'> 'jpeg'> 'OK'.

Step #10 The Final Step: Go back to the instructable click 'Select Files' > Click 'upload files' > 'select your file' you just exported,  and your picture with caption will appear. 

Next: How to work with a Facebook Album.