How to master your phone photography skills

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Phone photography is becoming more and more popular nowadays. Smartphones are becoming more reliable as time goes by. The camera feature is getting better and better and there are plenty of apps that help your phone camera be the best it can be. Just ten years ago, if you took a phone photo and printed it, it would’ve turned out pixelated, not really all that sharp, and of course, it was a very small file so the quality was not great at all. But now times are changing and cameras on our phones are improving by leaps every time a new phone hits the market. If you think about it, we do take more photos with our phones than with our fancy “pro” cameras. If little Sam is doing something funny, you know you are going to pick up your phone and take a photo or record the moment. If you are using your phone a lot, then why not become a pro at it… Or maybe just a little better at it? Here are a few tips that we use to master our skills of phone photography.

• GET IT SHARP! Make sure to clean your camera lens! The fact that we handle our phone constantly throughout the day and if you use your phone to talk to someone, you have to place the phone against your ear, which means that you’ll probably get your camera lens dirty with fingerprints or oil from your skin or hair. You have no idea how many times I’ve seen fingerprints all over my camera lens and when I take a photo, and it looks all foggy or soft. The fix? Simply wipe your camera lens regularly. Use a [Microfiber Cloth] and [cleaning fluid] to clean the surface of your phone, iPad, or iPhone so the next time your need to capture a moment as it’s happening, your phone will be able to take a smudge-free image. Best of all, the microfiber cloth and screen cleaning fluid are small enough to fit into your pocket or purse, so don’t forget to take them with you as you leave the house!

• Get the most resolution in your image. Remember that photos taken in selfie mode or with the front-facing camera have less resolution than the images that are taken from the rear-facing camera. Take photos from the back of the device whenever possible, just in case you capture something amazing and want to print it.

• Refine your area of focus. You can also change the main focus of your image by tapping on the screen of your phone while taking a photo. Once you have framed your shot, touch where you want your focus to be and your camera will make that area the sharpest focus in the image. 

• Avoid zooming in with your phone camera. By zooming in, you lose image quality because the phone “digitally” crops your image as oppose to the camera lens actually adjusting the zoom. Most smartphone cameras do not have an optical zoom. Instead, when you use the zoom feature, your smartphone is essentially blowing up the image and cropping it. Zooming in too far creates a pixelated image which makes it difficult to see. Try to move closer to your subject if you can! If moving in is not a possibility, then use a [wide or telephoto lens kit] to help you get that perfect image. With as often as you use your camera phone, you might as well get a few toys to improve images.

• Get hands free! Use a [TRIPOD] for your phone to avoid capturing shaky photos and to nail those perfect selfies; especially if your tripod comes with a remote for your phone. Then you don’t have to use the camera timer and run into the photo as the phone takes the image. 

• Edit your photos to get that extra POP! I love the Adobe Lightroom app to edit all of my phone photos. The flexibility of options and the ability to save presets makes editing and adjusting your pictures super easy! All the photos you see on this page were taken with a phone and the lightroom editing app was used to finish the details. If you need a resource for Adobe Lightroom Mobile presets, you can check out mine on my [online store].

• Take a lot of pictures – Because you can delete things quickly on a smartphone camera, take lots of pictures and go back to find the best one, especially when it comes down to photos of kids.

• Don’t use flash, when possible – The camera flash on the smartphone is getting better, but they still have a mannerism of washing out your subject and giving you the obvious red-eye. To improve your lighting in a low light situation, try a separate source of light you add on your own. Using the [LUME CUBE] does amazing things for lighting your images without using the flash on your device.

• Follow the rules. Learning some basic composition ‘rules’ will go miles in capturing more interesting photos. For example, the rule of thirds is a concept that by not placing your subject squarely in the middle of your frame, but by dissecting your frame into thirds and placing your subject on one of those lines creates an image that is more interesting and enjoyable to view. Add the grid lines to your camera screen through the settings menu on your device to help you with this type of composition rule.  Simple tips like this can bring life to your photos and makes you that much closer to mastering your phone photography.

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