How to take better images on your phone
If you’re like the average person, the first thing you reach for when you want to capture a moment isn’t a big camera. We usually pull a tiny camera right out of our pocket and start shooting. While this is the most common, quick, and easy way to take photos, knowing some tips and tricks can really help you produce better photos with little to no extra effort!
Angles Are Everything
This is probably a no-brainer, but if you’re trying to create new and interesting photos that stand out from everyone else’s, you’re probably going to want to try to take pictures from some different angles or perspectives. This can really set your photos apart from others!
Depth
When you’re taking images, most often in portraits and food photography, you’re going to want to utilize portrait mode if your phone comes with it, or editing in post production. On the iPhone, portrait mode automatically blurs the background around your subject to create the illusion of “bokeh,” or in other words, blurring. Bokeh is very common in professional photographers’ portrait work and is a result of a large aperture. While you can’t change your aperture on your phone camera, you can utilize this tool to mimic professional work. I also used Snapseed to apply the same edits to the photos. I used the heal tool as well as some smoothing on the skin. I applied these edits as similarly as possible so that the difference that utilizing this mode makes. It makes the subject stand out against the background and is really worth utilizing to increase the professional look of the image. If you don’t have access to this mode on your phone, Snapseed has a blur tool available that you can use to try and get this same effect.
Lens Compression
This is an awesome trick for your phone that will really help you “up” your photo game! If you have a subject you’re trying to shoot, whether it’s a person or an object, you can use this tip to alter the background even if you frame the subject the same. All you do is pinch and zoom! You frame the subject the way you want, and take a step back if necessary. As you can see in the two photos below, the background will appear bigger and more spread out when you use this lens compression method. All I did to create these two images was taking the first image at normal zoom, then I zoomed in on the second image about halfway while taking a step back so the subject would be about the same as the first image. (I only did halfway to keep the image from losing too much quality). If you’re still not sure you can tell the difference, look at the tea kettle! See how the cookies are about the same size in both images but the tea kettle is larger and you can’t see the handles of the fridge anymore? This is an awesome tip to help you step up your photo game as long as you have the space!
