You see a gorgeously patterned spider weaving his still sticky web across the sun rays and your photography senses are tingling… Would it been a decade back you will only be able to capture that moment for yourself and have a slight regret that you can’t share this beautiful moment with the rest of the world. One are those days, as now almost all of us have a professional camera equivalent always ready to capture the moment and give others the same joy you cherished.
Yes I am talking about the smart phones, I feel they are very underrated as photography devices. May be there true potentials get lost among selfies and filters. We are so blindfolded by the myth that photography equals to expensive cameras that we don’t use the day by day advancing cameras in our pockets to their full potentials.
Don’t believe me? Have a look at these snaps, taken by me, using…..
…..yes my smartphone. All these clicks are made by smart phone and I know that most of you all have visualized me with an iPhone X or Note 8, But believe me I still own a humble galaxy grand prime.
So what I thought is to give some tips to the other inspiring photographers who are struggling without a way to follow their passion. Don’t worry the answer for your dream lies in your pocket (Not your wallet but in your phone).
01. The Rule of third (Ironically it’s the first thing we are going to discuss)
The rule of thirds involves mentally dividing up your image using 2 horizontal lines and 2 vertical lines. You then position the important elements in your scene along those lines, or at the points where they meet.
Also another handy feature in most mobiles is that you can enable grid lines which can help you to follow the rule of third method.
You can learn rule of third in more detail from here
02. Set the focus (you and your device both should be focused)
This is the most important thing to look out when taking a photo. Make sure that your subject is well focused prior to shoot. You can focus the subject by simply tapping the screen on the subject point.
If you want to draw more attention to the subject, you can blur the background using a photo editing tool.
03. Don’t zoom (walk the distance yaar!)
Mobile phone’s zooming is digital (not an optical zoom like in DSLR), So the image will get cropped as you zoom in. This will lead to loss of quality in the image and more you zoom in, more poor will be the quality of the image.
So to take a photo of a far away subject, the best approach is to walk closer to the subject instead of zoom in.
04. Keep steady (something difficult especially when your subject is of the opposite gender)
What if phone shakes while you take the photo? Yes, You’ll get a blurred image and you friend will mock you with diabetes jokes. To avoid this, you should hold the phone with both hands. Best approach is to hold your phone horizontal instead of vertical. This gives you a wide frame.
And also when you are taking a landscape photo, make sure that subject is horizontally aligned.
05. Consider your frame
If you have a messy background in your photos it can distract user’s attention away from your intended subject. Therefore make sure that background is cluttered free when you taking photo and know your frame well prior to shoot.
If the background of your photo has lot of clashing and distracting colors, then make your photograph to black and white. By muting the colors from the image, viewers attention will directly drag to the subject of the image.
06. Try out from different angles
Rather than shooting a photo in standing position, try out in different angle. Since the mobile phone is comparatively smaller than the DSLR and also less prone to breaking by falling down, we CAN BE more flexible when taking photos from different perspective and different angel. It’ll get you a better shot and it also shows how you see the subject.
07. Don’t rely on one shot (learn from the ladies)
Grab a girl’s phone and surf their gallery, behind their last Instagram selfie (Which most probably will say random click ) will lie a minimum of 40 such “random clicks” which were taken prior to getting that perfect insta shot, this my friend is something we should learn from them.
(Warning : Do run as fast as possible after doing the above experiment with a girls phone)
Don’t expect your first click itself to be picture perfect. If you found a good view, don’t just take one photo and hope for the best. Of-course chances are getting a perfect shot at first is tiny, very tiny. Try taking multiple photos in various angle, various settings. Then later you can decide which one better among each and pickup a perfect one.
08. Be like a serial killer, shoot in the dark
In the dark, small amount of light will give you a perfect quality of subject and user’s attention could easily catch-able to the subject. In order to take the perfect shot in dark, switch your camera mode to Pro Mode in camera setting and then adjust the ISO, contrast, brightness and shutter speed (shutter speed is available in the latest smart phones) manually until you get the subject fine and clear.
If you are not well hand to shoot manually, then shoot in normal mode with well focused. Then you can adjust the light and color balance using a photo editing tool like Lightroom.
And also get the best from your phones flash when you shoot in the darkness.
Bonus tip — Try Mobile Lenses
There are some features which won’t support from standard mobile’s lens. Such as macro shoot, wide angle shoot, fish eye shoot, zoom shoot etc. To try out such shoot, you can use extensional mobile lenses.
That’s it. What you waiting for ? Let’s go and let’s get best out of our mobile phone.
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