How to take better photos with your phone
7 TIPS FOR TAKING BETTER PHOTOS WITH YOUR PHONE
Here is a short list of tips on how to take better photos with your phone. Modern phone cameras are unbelievably good at taking pictures in good lighting conditions. So why don’t we make the best out of it? We always have our phones in our pockets, and we never know when we will witness a photo-worthy moment. Let’s take a look at these tips.
Keep the lens clean
By touching our phones all the time, we often make the camera greasy. Keep in mind to wipe and clean the camera before taking the shot. A greasy camera will result in blurry and unclear photos.
Use all three cameras for different occasions
Most modern smartphones have multiple lenses. Most of them have three different cameras. Typically, one is the ”regular” lens camera, one is a zoom lens camera, and one is a wide-angle camera. Try using them in different scenes for the best results. This will significantly affect the composition of your photograph.
Composition rules
The rule of thirds and the golden ratio are my favorite composition tools.
The rule of thirds is the most valuable compositional guideline that breaks a photograph into thirds (horizontally and vertically), so you have nine pieces and four gridlines. All composition rules are great for beginners to learn about composition, but you should not limit yourself or blindly follow the rules. Using a rule of thirds and placing the key elements along the gridline will likely create a visually pleasing composition. You almost can’t miss with the rule of thirds
The golden ratio is the ratio of approximately 1 to 1.618. The golden ratio is another precious composition tool that we can use to help create our photographs and position our subjects. The golden ratio can be used to locate areas to place our subjects and distribute weight in photographs.
Use the exposure slider
Smartphones tend to overexpose an image. You can correct this by tapping on the screen and sliding to the left or down to correct the exposure. Most modern phones have this feature. This is a quick fix when we have no time to set the manual exposure.
Use manual camera settings
Most phones have a manual camera setting option. This is an excellent tool for taking your phone photography to the next level. You can control how you take the photo much more than the automatic camera mode. You can control the ISO, white balance, shutter speed, and many other parameters.
Select and edit the best photos
Selection is a crucial step. We tend to take too many similar photos. Some are always better than others. Select the best ones by adding them to favorites. You can review the images and see if they need cropping or straightening. Remember not to crop too much since this will result in resolution loss.
Use presets
This is where the magic happens. Adding that special look and feel to your photos is the way to take your phone photography to the next level. If you don’t have Lightroom mobile app installed on your phone yet, go get it. It’s free and the best app for editing photos on your phone. Many presets are already available inside the app, but you can create and import your own presets. Presets will magically turn your photos into aesthetic visual pleasures.