For the professionality of a website or blog, the photos are an important aspect. Already when taking pictures, you have to think twice about what the picture should be used for. Is this better for portrait or landscape orientation? Is the quality of the mobile phone camera sufficient? Of course it is not comparable to the picture quality of a professional camera. But still you can get more out of your mobile phone pictures by following these how to take better pictures with your phone tips.
First of all, practice, practice, practice!
Practice makes the perfection, as almost nobody is born with all the knowledge. Analyze your already snapped images in your gallery. Or are you even on your website looking for pictures with potential for improvement? Now you have new inspirations and know how to take the best possible pictures with your mobile phone.
Have the right light
We all know that. Once the light is a bit dark, it becomes difficult to take sharp and clear pictures. The best pictures are taken with the mobile phone on sunny, slightly cloudy days. The light is then balanced and you do not have to deal with strong contrasts. If you want to capture a darker atmosphere, you have to experiment a little bit with the different settings. Nowadays mobile phones have a night scene or other presets that are tuned for poor light conditions.
Get close – don’t use the zoom from your phone
Too far away from your desired subject? The best option to zoom with your mobile phone is to get closer, with your feet and not using the zoom function from the phone. That way you can zoom without loss of quality.
Unfortunately, the digital zoom doesn’t help too much. You will get closer to the subject, but it doesn’t get more detailed because the resolution gets smaller and more pixelated. And not only for the sake of quality I recommend not to zoom with the phone, because when you move yourself you usually discover more exciting perspectives and compositions. It’s closer to the action and you can see that later on the pictures.
Of course that’s not always possible, that’s why we’re zooming in. But you can find out if a mini-lens is available for your mobile phone. With this you can zoom optically, without loss of resolution.
Don’t use the flash
Keep your hands away from the flash! The flash is placed too close to the lens, resulting in unnatural light and makes everything look very artificial and unreal. For parties or concerts the flash from the mobile phones are not strong and bright enough anyway. Therefore, always leave the flash off.
The most important thing when shoot pictures in the dark is that the camera is kept as still as possible for as long as possible. Use both hands, lean yourself to a wall or pole, put your phone on a table to keep it stable or take a tripod for even better results.
Alternatively, you can manually lower the ISO value if you take pictures in the dark.
The rule of third
Simply spoken, that means don’t place your subject in the middle of your frame. In this rule, you divide the picture virtually into nine parts. Turn on the grid function on your phone camera to get the grid lines. Two horizontal and two vertical lines are then the guidance to take a picture. The lines create four crossing points. If the subject is placed on one of the four crossing points rather than in the middle, the picture looks much more harmonic and less boring.
The grid lines are also a good help to get a perfectly aligned horizon. On example many pictures look like the water from the ocean is going down from the left to the right side or vice versa. With the help if the grid lines you can make an aligned ocean
Of course, depending on the subject and intention of the image, it may also be interesting to ignore this rule. The breaking of rules can sometimes lead to exceptionally exciting pictures.
Experimenting with positions and perspectives
Experiment and try different positions and perspectives. Get down to your knees, climb up a wall, use the side mirror from a car or scooter, lie down or use the reflections in shop windows or from your sunglasses – just try something different and make your pictures interesting.
If you take portrait photos, you should take pictures at eye level. The photographed person should fix a point just above the lens and should not look directly into the camera.
Learn the settings from your camera app
Nowadays the many functions of the camera app can be complicated. Therefore make yourself familiar with it and check out all the possible settings and options. If you are overwhelmed, find an online tutorial for your specific phone.
Edit pictures later
It can be fun to use all the built-in effects or funny filters, but to keep the best quality you should take quality you should take the picture with its original color at a high resolution. Later you can edit it always on your computer, where you have much more options.
Find amazing subjects for your photo
The reason why some photos often are better than others doesn’t just depend on the technology. Especially the subject is important. There is no use of the best camera when you photograph the wall of your house or you cut off half of the main sight on your picture. So first and foremost, make sure that you do not just take pictures of everything which you see left and right. Instead, find subjects that are worth taking pictures of and take your time.
Last but not least, clean the lens!
Sounds stupid and logical? But do you really clean your lens on your smart phone every time before you take a picture? The best way to clean your lens is to use a cleaning towel for glasses or a microfiber towel. Your clothes are not the best option, as all kind of things as dirt, sweat or sunscreen is most probably on your clothes.
If you follow all this how to take better pictures with your phone steps, you will have a happy snapping time.
- Want to get more professional? Check out the Nomadic Matts Travel Photographer training!
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