It’s amazing what great photos you can take with your mobile phone, especially with a few tops tips from a professional photographer. Thank you to Carley Aplin Photography for writing this great guest blog post for me about getting the most out of your mobile phone photos.
1. Clean Your Lens!!
It’s probably it’s the last thing you’ll think of doing but will have one of the biggest impacts on your photos. With the amount of make and sticky fingers in most homes I can guarantee that your lens on your camera / phone has either finger prints , grease , food and dirt or a combination of these on the lens effecting the quality of your images.
2. How to stop blurry photos
Blur occurs when there isn’t not enough light to take the photo or that something is moving too fast for your shutter to freeze. This mean unless you have a camera that you can control the shutter speed, your camera is going to guess what you want it to do and slow the shutter down to let in more light.
You either need to get your subject to stand still, increase the light by moving your subject nearer to a light source , or if you are feeling brave you try an app to allow you to control your shutter speed, last resort is to use another phone’s flash to light the photo.
3. HDR mode turned on.
When you use HDR, your iPhone Camera automatically blends the best parts of three photos taken quickly at different exposures—one at normal exposure, then one each of the brightest and darkest parts of the scene.
4. Lighting a photo.
Try to avoid stand a subject in front of a light source. i.e. turn your subject to the light falls across their body and doesn’t light them from behind, your camera will struggle with the light and shadows and will not be able to adapt for them both. It’s also good to remember not turn them to face the light source as the light will become flat.
Did you know? You can tap the sunshine on the screen to increase or decrease the brightness of the photo?
5. Details and Perspective
You don’t’ always need to take a photo of the whole scene, make sure you come in close to photograph the small details.
It’s also good to remember not just shoot from your normal perspective , but to shoot from different angles, get low down so you are level with the children, or up high to show a birds eye view of their activity.
6. Rule of thirds to create a great image!
Using the rule of thirds means that the subject isn't centred in an image, Instead, the main focal point is a bit off to one side.. This helps to draw the viewer's eye into the composition, instead of just glancing at the centre.
7. Negative Space
I love to use negative space. Many people will ask, what it is? Well it’s is the area which surrounds the main subject in your photo or what’s known as "positive space” By leaving a large area of negative space in your photo it can help to emphasize the main subject of a photo by drawing your eye to and giving your eyes somewhere to focus and rest. This helps prevent your image from appearing too cluttered.
8. Reflections
It’s a great idea to use water or windows to take photos with reflections. This can add an element of interest to your photography. You can use puddles, rivers, mirrors, and even glass windows to capture a reflection.
9. Shoot through elements in the foreground
Use your surroundings to add layers to your photo. By shooting things like through leaves or flowers you can create a stunning image.
10. Capturing your children at home.
Set up a activity for your children to do somewhere that has great light and won’t require a camera with great low light capabilities. It makes it more fun for them and means you can capture lots of genuine moments and smiles without the dreaded “cheese” face.
