It’s Thursday, so I’m looking back at my New Year’s Resolutions. Today I’m getting real with one of my resolutions. #2…There are just some days that I can’t for one reason or another carry my big camera with me. In most situations, I at least have it in my car, but again, there’s just some places and times, I can’t or don’t feel like lugging it along. So with that being said, I think most of us these days have a decent camera phone. If you have an iPhone 5 or greater, they take really darn pics, considering. Today I’m sharing a few tips of things I’ve learned in the year that I’ve owned an iPhone.
1. Don’t zoom with your camera! Either use your feet and get closer or you can do a small amount of cropping afterwards, either in an app on your phone or better yet an app on your computer.
2. Take all of your pictures in the camera app on your phone, not in the facebook app, instagram app, etc. Using your camera app, enables you to take the quickest shot possible. There’s nothing worse then clicking away at your phone trying to get that shot and the harddrive is spinning in your phone because it’s trying to connect to wifi or something. When you’re in the camera app, you don’t have to worry about external issues such as that.
3. Clean the lens. As simple as that is just use a soft cloth and clean the back of your phone. It can make a huge difference.
4. Hold the phone like you hold a camera. In other words, put your camera horizontally. Just make sure to keep your fingers out of the way of the lens.
5. Turn on the grid in your camera app. This grid helps with 2 things important details of a picture. 1st, it helps to keep your horizons and horizontal lines straight. 2nd, it helps you to pin-point your rules of thirds.
6. Take several shots of the same thing. Sometimes I get the best shot, but if I’m moving or the object is moving even so slightly then it’s blurry. So it never hurts to take the same shot more than once. That’s one of hte most beautiful things about digital photography.
7. Move around. Get high, get low, change up your angle. It’s amazing what happens when you do this.
8. Find the light. The iPhone takes beautiful pics in good lighting.
9. Turn off the flash. If it’s so dark that your flash needs to fire, then it’s not worth taking. Flash totally ruins a picture, in my opinion. Now if just one of those times you HAVE to take a picture, but it’s too dim and you can find a lamp or natural light to help you out, then go ahead and turn your flash back on. There are times, when I just have to use the flash, but I hate it when that happens.
10. Remember that your picture doesn’t actually TAKE until you take your finger OFF the button.
Top picture courtesy of Matthew Pearce