How to Take Advantage of Your Phone’s Camera
October 11, 2016
Pioneer photographer Ernst Haas once said, “There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.’’ This quote is important for photographers who feel as if their phones restrict them from taking amazing photos. Although our phones are not yet as powerful as a DSLR, they offer unparalleled convenience in capturing a moment when we are on the go. Honing in on the capabilities of mobile photography is about going back to the basics of composition. By focusing on the light, the lines, the patterns, the colors, and the placement of the subject, your photography- whether you are a novice or professional- can be greatly improved. Even if you firmly believe that smartphones will never replace DSLR’s, you can still come to appreciate the technicalities that make up stunning smartphone photography.
1. Develop Compositional Style
Composition is the combination of distinct parts or elements to form a whole. Composition envelops the rule of thirds, simplicity, framing, texture, leading lines, and colors. With smartphone photography there is no way to modify the aperture, so most likely everything in your frame will be in focus. For this reason, it is essential that the elements in your frame are exactly how you want them to be in order to convey your message. On the list, this tip requires the most practice and is something that you will always be working towards.
2. Turn Off Flash
Flash is the main source of error in mobile photography. Everyone has a collection of photos from a night on the town where they went a bit too flash-happy and can barely recognize if their best friend is still their best friend or a demon. There is no doubt that flash causes photos to be overexposed, with washed out faces and colors far from their natural hue. So, unless you are in a cave with no sources of light there is absolutely no reason to resort to flash! Instead take advantage of natural light (that isn’t too harsh) whenever you can. Play around with the intensity, placement, and filtration of sunlight to see what works best for you. If you find yourself with no natural light, artificial light in the form of indoor lights, neon signs, or even traffic lights can provide powerful lighting for your subject.
3. Substitute Cropping for Zooming In
Point-and-shoot cameras offer optical zoom, meaning that the lens physically moves to magnify the image, so that the image quality remains the same. Unfortunately smartphones feature digital zoom, which is similar to zooming into an image on a photo-editing program. The term digital zoom is in fact a misnomer because it does not physically zoom in any further, it just enlarges the section on your phone screen. This undermines photo quality, leaving photos pixelated and distorted. In the name of high quality photos, take photos at maximum digital zoom and crop later.
4. Apps
Like most things, less is more when it comes to apps. In post-processing it is crucial to download a handful of the best photo editing apps and learn how to best use them to achieve your desired result. Apps like VSCO and Afterlight are perfect for adjusting contrast, highlights, shadows, brightness, sharpness, saturation, fade, and white balance as well as offering a selection of predetermined filters. Once you are comfortable with the basics of editing photos through these apps, there is a whole world of more specific photography apps to explore. Here are three of our favorites:
SKRWT- Allows users to correct perspective and lens distortion caused by wide angle lens by straightening up lines in oder to make them appear more natural.
Mextures- Allows users to apply unlimited layers of lights, textures, film grains, and gradients with a variety of image tools to produce images that are dynamic and creative.
Snapseed- Allows users to edit their photos through customizable presets. Similar to PhotoShop, you can use SnapSeed to selectively edit or remove parts of an image.
5. Invest in Accessories
While our cellphones give us the possibility to take amazing photos with a simple tap of the screen, there are also endless products on the market that are available to enhance our on-the-go photography. We want to stress that going out and buying accessories will not make someone a more skilled photographer, but that it can have the effect of bringing more flexibility and convenience to your art.
Tripods- For mobile or point-and-shoot photographers, tripods are arguably the most powerful accessory to own. To attach your smartphone to a tripod, you will need to buy a tripod mount. Once you attach a tripod mount you can use your camera with a variety of tripods to have the ability to take pictures from almost any angle you can imagine.
Lenses- There are many lenses on the market that can bring new perspective and depth to your photos. Just clip-on a fish-eye, macro, telephoto, and wide angle lens and push your phone’s camera to the limit.
External Light Source- An external light source provides a better quality of light than built-in flash. Portable light sources are helpful in adjusting the angle and the intensity of a light source as well as the hue for more dramatic shots.
SD card reader- There are devices that allow you to import your images from your camera straight onto your phone. This doesn’t help photography per se but it offers a faster method to import images onto your phone so that you can edit and upload your images to social media faster than ever.
