Smartphone Photography Tips
I carry one, you probably carry one, nowadays almost everybody has one.
If you have a smartphone you have a camera - if you have a camera you can take photos and if you can take photos then you've started your journey as a photographer.
Whether you take 'selfies' or snapshots of your food, family, friends or even the sky that's up to you. Here's my take on mobile phone photography including a few things that I think you need to think about when taking and editing photos all from within your phone.
At the point of taking the photo most mobile phone cameras have limited settings so I'd say focus on your composition, what you want to appear/not appear in your image, where your light source is coming from and where it is hitting on your image - keeping the light source behind the camera and hitting on the subject works well but if done right you can use light to create all sorts of shadows and highlights. In my experience having the light source behind the subject and coming in to the camera doesn't work so well with mobile phone cameras.
Composition wise try taking photos with your main subject in different parts of the frame, you can follow the Rule of Thirds or just make up your own thing and see how that goes - If you're like me you'll find that more often than not you'll prefer images where the main subject is off-centre.
Amongst the limited settings at shooting point I have found that most phones have the ability to roughly control the exposure and choose the exposure point -this is usually achieved by tapping the part of the image you want to be able to see (usually the main subject) On some phone cameras you can adjust exposure further by pressing your finger on the image and moving it up to make the image brighter and down to make it darker.
After you've taken your photo you can either use it as it is or you can edit it (almost every image you see online has been edited in some way) There are many photo editing apps out there, some free and a lot that you have to pay for but before you dive in to these why don't you see what editing tools come with your phone.
The usual adjustment tools like brightness, contrast and saturation are usually in there somewhere and they shouldn't be overlooked - just increasing the saturation by the tiniest amount and adding a little contrast can make an image a lot more dramatic.
I've noticed that the last couple of phones I've used have had a few different filters pre-installed - personally I find phone filters can be way over the top, I still think it looks better to turn the saturation right down and then adjust contrast to turn your phone photo black and white as you get more control but again it is all on what you're shooting and what your desired results and personal preferences are.
Social Media Apps have a few good editing tools too - Instagram has my favourite tool which is called Tilt Shift - you can set either a Linear or Radial focus point to change the focus of your image, this is achieved by adding an out of focus effect to outside of your selected zone, nice if you're feeling arty or good if you want to take the viewer's attention away from something you missed when taking the photo!
My final tip for this post is: Make sure your photo is in focus when you take it, Don't rely on the sharpness adjustment! No amount of sharpness in post production is going to fix a photo that is out of focus!
Taking Photos on a Phone
Composition wise try taking photos with your main subject in different parts of the frame, you can follow the Rule of Thirds or just make up your own thing and see how that goes - If you're like me you'll find that more often than not you'll prefer images where the main subject is off-centre.
Amongst the limited settings at shooting point I have found that most phones have the ability to roughly control the exposure and choose the exposure point -this is usually achieved by tapping the part of the image you want to be able to see (usually the main subject) On some phone cameras you can adjust exposure further by pressing your finger on the image and moving it up to make the image brighter and down to make it darker.
Editing your images
After you've taken your photo you can either use it as it is or you can edit it (almost every image you see online has been edited in some way) There are many photo editing apps out there, some free and a lot that you have to pay for but before you dive in to these why don't you see what editing tools come with your phone.
The usual adjustment tools like brightness, contrast and saturation are usually in there somewhere and they shouldn't be overlooked - just increasing the saturation by the tiniest amount and adding a little contrast can make an image a lot more dramatic.
I've noticed that the last couple of phones I've used have had a few different filters pre-installed - personally I find phone filters can be way over the top, I still think it looks better to turn the saturation right down and then adjust contrast to turn your phone photo black and white as you get more control but again it is all on what you're shooting and what your desired results and personal preferences are.
Social Media Apps have a few good editing tools too - Instagram has my favourite tool which is called Tilt Shift - you can set either a Linear or Radial focus point to change the focus of your image, this is achieved by adding an out of focus effect to outside of your selected zone, nice if you're feeling arty or good if you want to take the viewer's attention away from something you missed when taking the photo!
My final tip for this post is: Make sure your photo is in focus when you take it, Don't rely on the sharpness adjustment! No amount of sharpness in post production is going to fix a photo that is out of focus!
All of the images in this post were taken and edited on mobile phones.
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