I was out at Shelter Island the other day with my friend Patsy. She was trying out her brand new Sony 100-400mm lens and I was along for the ride with just a 28-70mm lens on my camera. I took a couple of half-hearted shots of the San Diego skyline. Seeing that it was very hazy and not having much reach in my lens, I expected I'd just delete the pictures later.

With many cameras, you can achieve a soft-focus look to your images, while still keeping features sharp. This done by taking one out-of-focus image, combined with an in-focus image of the same subject. Although my usual camera is a Nikon, I am sure that this feature is available in many cameras.

The Upright tool in Adobe Lightroom 5 allows you to straighten horizons and correct the perspective in architecture pictures automatically.

At a recent corporate shoot, I had to photograph company employees having fun as they rode down a zip line. Not too difficult, you might think, except the sun was bright and in the wrong direction. I wanted to show the faces of the zip line riders, but of course they were in shadow.

Adding a vignet involves the lightening or darkening of the edges of a picture to draw the viewer's eye towards the center. Most lenses have a natural vignetting effect as the lens darkens towards the edges and lens correction software can be used to remove it in post-processing.