7 TIPS FOR TAKING BETTER PHOTOS WITH YOUR PHONE

Here is a short list of tips on how to take better photos with your phone. Modern phone cameras are unbelievably good at taking pictures in good lighting conditions. So why don’t we make the best out of it? We always have our phones in our pockets, and we never know when we will witness a photo-worthy moment. Let’s take a look at these tips.

Keep the lens clean

By touching our phones all the time, we often make the camera greasy. Keep in mind to wipe and clean the camera before taking the shot. A greasy camera will result in blurry and unclear photos. 

Use all three cameras for different occasions

Most modern smartphones have multiple lenses. Most of them have three different cameras. Typically, one is the ”regular” lens camera, one is a zoom lens camera, and one is a wide-angle camera. Try using them in different scenes for the best results. This will significantly affect the composition of your photograph.

wide angle camera
normal camera
zoom lens camera

Composition rules

The rule of thirds and the golden ratio are my favorite composition tools.

The rule of thirds is the most valuable compositional guideline that breaks a photograph into thirds (horizontally and vertically), so you have nine pieces and four gridlines. All composition rules are great for beginners to learn about composition, but you should not limit yourself or blindly follow the rules. Using a rule of thirds and placing the key elements along the gridline will likely create a visually pleasing composition. You almost can’t miss with the rule of thirds

The golden ratio is the ratio of approximately 1 to 1.618. The golden ratio is another precious composition tool that we can use to help create our photographs and position our subjects. The golden ratio can be used to locate areas to place our subjects and distribute weight in photographs.

Use the exposure slider

 Smartphones tend to overexpose an image. You can correct this by tapping on the screen and sliding to the left or down to correct the exposure. Most modern phones have this feature. This is a quick fix when we have no time to set the manual exposure.

Use manual camera settings

Most phones have a manual camera setting option. This is an excellent tool for taking your phone photography to the next level. You can control how you take the photo much more than the automatic camera mode. You can control the ISO, white balance, shutter speed, and many other parameters. 

Select and edit the best photos

Selection is a crucial step. We tend to take too many similar photos. Some are always better than others. Select the best ones by adding them to favorites. You can review the images and see if they need cropping or straightening. Remember not to crop too much since this will result in resolution loss.  

Use presets

This is where the magic happens. Adding that special look and feel to your photos is the way to take your phone photography to the next level. If you don’t have Lightroom mobile app installed on your phone yet, go get it. It’s free and the best app for editing photos on your phone. Many presets are already available inside the app, but you can create and import your own presets. Presets will magically turn your photos into aesthetic visual pleasures. 

Extra tip: Adjust preset settings

Every smartphone has its own default camera settings, and every smartphone creates very different photos. That’s why Lightroom presets can create different results on photos taken with a different phone. I know this is an extra step, but if you’re looking to really Improve your photos, you will have to adjust the preset setting just a little bit. Here’s how:

When you select a preset, it automatically applies all the preset settings to your photo at 100% amount. You can click on the preset thumbnail and adjust the amount of the preset.
You can increase or decrease the effect of the preset on your image. When you slide the amount slider to the right, the preset effect will increase; if you slide it to the left, the preset intensity will decrease.
Another way to adjust the preset is to adjust the exposure sliders in the ”light” tab. You can increase or decrease contrast, shadows, highlights, and other lighting settings to create the perfect result.
If you feel that the image is too yellow or too blue, you can adjust the color balance in the color tab. You can also increase or decrease the saturation of your image.
If you want to change the hue, saturation, or luminance of a certain color, you can do so if you click on the ”mix” button in the color tab.
The grain effect is a tricky one in Lightroom. The intensity of the grain can vary a lot, and that depends on the number of pixels in your photo. The smaller your photo is, the stronger the grain will appear. You can simply adjust the grain intensity in the ”effects” tab.