Tips For Mobile Photography

These days, everyone can be a photographer. Taking excellent photos isn’t a labour-intense process anymore. You don’t even need to invest in fancy cameras to capture important moments of your life.

All you need is your smartphone (The Beatles would be disappointed to hear this one).

Mobile photography is a modern art that everyone should learn. We live in the digital era, where people perceive most information by looking at photos.

Once you learn the mobile photography basics, you will be able to create the perfect social media profile where you can promote either yourself or your online business. That’s what you should know to be able to take awesome pictures with your phone:

Balance your shot

Learn how to use mobile photo settings to create the composition. To balance your photo better, make sure to use the camera’s gridlines, and follow the ‘rule of thirds’.

The rule of thirds is a basic composition principle that can make your picture look more natural. To switch the grid on, go to your settings. Once you see that your shot is divided with vertical and horizontal lines, place a subject right in the middle, or somewhere, where these lines cross. Later on, you will not even need to go into the setting – you will be able to imagine these lines and balance photos without any effort.

Set the focus

The best thing about phone photography is that it can set a focus automatically. Needless to say, it makes things so much easier (you can spend hours setting the focus with a professional camera).

So, if you want your camera lens to focus on one particular subject, just tap the screen to sharpen the view.

In case you want to take a photo of an object in motion, tap the phone screen to correct the focus a few seconds before it comes closer. The preparation process is essential since some phone cameras can’t follow an object while refocusing when it’s needed.

Another important thing is to choose the focus. Your object shouldn’t take the entire space, but only around two-thirds of it. If you follow this simple advice, you will have a chance to emphasize the object in your photo.

To make your object even more vivid, consider using filters, or cropping the picture.

Edit your photos

It is important to emphasize that you can’t rely on editing to fix your poor quality photos. Editing is like a pleasant addition, but it can’t rescue your composition or exposure.

There are a lot of editing apps. Before you discover these exciting mobile applications, use your phone’s own editing app. If your native app is not enough, consider doing magic in VSCO, Snapseed, Canva, Glitch, Mirror Labs, or Lightroom.

For instance, the Lightroom app can sometimes perform better than the great and powerful Photoshop, and with premium portrait lightroom presets you can apply amazing effects all by yourself!

Try different perspectives

To create your unique photography style, start taking photos from different perspectives. It can help you create an illusion of height or depth with other subjects.

So, don’t be afraid to shoot objects at a downward angle. You might get something really great out of it. Also, playing with perspectives helps to develop a creative eye.

Avoid zooming

Zooming in just doesn’t work very well when you take photos with your smartphone camera. Experts recommend coming close to an object in order to take a better picture. Try to take close-up images that capture delicate, intricate details without compromising quality.

To sharpen the details, use the special tool in your mobile photo editing app.

Find the right light

Avoid using flash since it can make your photo look overexposed.

To take excellent images, find natural light so that you can play with shadows or create a silhouette. It’s recommended to practice during the golden hour ( a few hours after the sunrise).

You can use flash if it’s the only option you have. However, some new models have a colour-balance flash that can do a great job!

More on lens

Where do you keep your phone usually – in a bag or a pocket? Needless to say, it makes your phone camera lens collect all the dust and lint. If you want to take excellent photos with your phone, make sure to clean your camera’s lens from time to time.

Also, consider attaching external lenses to the top of your phone’s native camera. This fancy move will allow you to bring a new perspective and better quality to your photos.