I have so many tips for you today!  First, let’s talk about when your computer display suddenly turns upside down. I remember the trauma of getting my first Windows PC plopped on my desk at work and having my UNIX-based Sun Workstation carted away like it was yesterday.  That was nearly 18 years ago now.

In all those years, in spite of having just about every problem imaginable, including a few that people didn’t believe unless they saw it themselves, I never had my display suddenly appear upside down.  Not until yesterday, that is.

As it turns out, on a Windows PC, if, for reasons I haven’t come up with yet, you want your display upside down, you can hit the CTRL-ALT-Down Arrow keys simultaneously and your display will flip.  Use CTRL-ALT-Up Arrow to flip it right side up again.  This only works for monitors, not built-in laptop screens.

Yes, my computer is displaying upside down

I was quite surprised to learn this trick when I was attempting another 3-key command (CTRL-SHIFT-Down Arrow) in Excel, which will select everything in the column you’re cursor is in in a spreadsheet.  Imagine my surprise when, not even knowing what actual combination of keys I’d just hit, my screen went black and then turned back on upside down!  I was so amused, I took a picture and texted it to my Bestie in the middle of the work day!

The rest of my tips for today are iPhone photography related.  All are using the panoramic feature, which I am enjoying immensely.

1. The image you see as you’re shooting is significantly taller than what will be in the actual image.  In this panoramic taken from the top of the sledding hill, I thought I had Tisen positioned nicely as I twirled around the hill with the camera pointed down the slopes.  As it turned out, I nearly cut Tisen out of the photo all together.
   

   Learning the hard way that the image isn’t as tall as it looks when you’re shooting

2. It’s hard to hold the phone vertically, keep it level, and keep your fingers out of the image, especially while holding a dog leash.  Stand on the leash, hold the phone on the outside edges, and try not to shoot when the sun is directly overhead, making it almost impossible to see the screen and recognize when your fingers are in the photo.
   

   Scene plus finger plus some whopper-jawedness looking away from the riverfront

3. If you get whopper-jawed as you pan, stop moving and get yourself level again before continuing around the scene.  The iPhone camera will wait for you to get situated.  In this photo, I stopped 2x and I can’t find where.  In the first of the panoramic images above, can you see where I got whopper-jawed and kept on going as I straightened out the camera?
   

   Scene along the riverfront from the sledding hill

4. Panoramic images work best when the scene is further away.  Close up objects are less interesting for some reason.  Well, at least the ones I chose.
5. Some subjects look best in “normal” images.
   

   My handsome boy is easier to frame well in a “normal” shot