Better pictures

For the longest time I've wondered why the photos on my blog are somewhat lacking visually.  My thought was that maybe I need a better camera than the one on my phone (that may be true of course), but doh, yesterday the penny dropped.... don't just upload the photo, edit it first!   I use Picasa to shrink the pictures so they open quickly, but hadn't thought to use it to improve and crop before uploading.  So here is the first go at this, showing both an original (as I would have usually used) and an edited one. Hmmm... I like seeing pictures with cutting mat scales.  This block is 15.5" square.  I do know that daylight and perhaps a tripod would improve things further.

 

Another editing attempt, in which I didn't fiddle quite so much: