If you’re still not sure if a Smartphone can be a good tool for taking pictures, it’s because you haven’t read our comprehensive mega guide on mobile photography, with tips, tricks and much more.
If I were you, I wouldn’t miss it. You can also take a look at this article, in which at the time we entered the debate about whether mobile photography was photography or not. We get wet and say yes, definitely yes. But everyone who draws their own conclusions from it, more would be missing 😉
Now, whether you think that mobile photography can be photography in capital letters or not, surely you use your Smartphone’s camera every day, so, in any case, I hope that these tips help you improve them.
Oh, and remember that the perfect camera for everything does not exist, well yes, the perfect camera is the one you carry with you!
Advantages and disadvantages of mobile photography
Knowing the tool you have in hand, with its strengths and weaknesses, will help you get better results with it.
That is why I better start by telling you the advantages and disadvantages of taking photos with your mobile:
Advantage
- Size: Although smartphones are getting bigger, the truth is that they still fit comfortably in the pants pocket without any problem. In a small size you not only have a mobile office, but also a fairly complete camera.
- Chance: surely you have gone from being in the right place at the right time but, without your camera. The mobile phone has become an essential object in the lives of many and the fact that their cameras improve day by day seems to be a blessing for all photography enthusiasts.
- Versatility: Every day there are endless applications available to instantly edit the photos you take with your smartphone. There are thousands of effects available at your fingertips so you can achieve photos that many will envy. In your reflex or compact camera you cannot install applications.
- Incognito: It is very easy to take pictures without anyone noticing while using your phone, just put on an “I’m sending a text message” face to go unnoticed. This is a great power, so you must use it with great responsibility.
Let’s be honest, it also has some drawbacks:
Disadvantages
- Photo quality: If you only read the advantages, it would be a matter of minutes before you put your camera up for sale, but not everything is rosy. No matter how many megapixels they manage to include in phone cameras, working with very small sensors and miniature optics, the quality of the photos is not the best. And not only this, which for certain sizes can be more than enough, is that they have much less capacity to capture light, which is why they tend to have problems when the lighting is insufficient.
- Price: the more expensive the phone the better the camera, this is nothing new. Getting a good phone with a good camera, added to the necessary accessories to get the most out of it, can even make you exceed the budget of what a SLR or EVIL camera would cost you.
1. Think before you shoot
This is the BIG failing of most who do photography. But, unfortunately, in mobile photography it is even more common than when we work with another type of camera. I don’t think there is a single one of us who isn’t guilty of shooting photos without rhyme or reason, swiping a finger at the phone screen as if our lives depended on it.
Well, no, bad, bad, bad, that way you don’t learn anything or achieve anything. Mobile photography can become photography in capital letters, but it depends entirely on your effort and skill.
In photography, the most important thing is the message that you manage to convey to the observer. To take an excellent photograph it is not necessary that you have the best and most expensive camera, but you do need to work on the image and the message through the arrangement of the elements in the scene. You must concentrate on directing the observer’s gaze and managing to record your photograph on his retina. Take advantage of all the articles of the Photographer’s Blog for it,
2. Find a topic that motivates you
If you dive a bit through the most common social networks, you will see that there are many themes and types of images. A mistake, for those who want to make a bit of a portfolio or delve into their personal style, is usually to make images a bit without rhyme or reason, that is, without a theme that unites them or a style that defines you. Normally, choosing a theme that we like usually ends up leading us to something much more important: finding our style, where we identify ourselves and feel comfortable, where, ultimately, we are ourselves.
3. Learn to know the light and how your Smartphone works with it
As I told you before, the small sensors of this type of mobile cameras, despite being increasingly sophisticated, have a powerful enemy: darkness.
In low-light situations, the wonders these devices perform in bright sunlight or good lighting fade as soon as the environment darkens. If you learn what are the limitations of the sensor you work with, the rest is sucked 😉
- hard light: The Dynamic range of the cameras integrated into our mobile phones, is very limited, that is, they generally force us to choose between light or shadow because they are unable to display both correctly. This is particularly the case in hard light situations, where lights usually give better result than the dark areas that more clearly show the loss of quality.
- You can activate HDR mode in harsh light situations if you want to increase the dynamic range of the scene.
- Be creative: Shadows and backlights can be good allies when working with hard light.
- Soft light: It allows to show the whole scene with equal intensity in terms of light. Take advantage of cloudy days that, despite their bad reputation, the truth is that they provide us with a very photogenic soft and homogeneous light to work with.
4. Work the compositions
The ease of use of most applications to take pictures with your Smartphone, allows you to focus on the composition without having to distract your attention by adjusting other parameters. In addition, the possibility of seeing the final result of the image live on the screen provides you with an incomparable framework (and without excuses) to work on your compositions (or the way in which we distribute the elements in the frame).
5. Apply the rules of composition
Rules that will be very useful when framing your images can be:
- rule of thirds: According to which the frame is divided into three thirds both horizontally and vertically, resulting in four intersections of lines. It is at these intersections where it is considered that the strengths of the image and where, consequently, we should place the center of interest of our composition.
- Trick: Depending on the app you use to take the shot, it is often possible to activate a grid to visualize the lines and their intersections.
- Gaze law: According to which you must leave space in the area towards which the gaze or movement of the person you are portraying is directed.
- negative space: It is everything that surrounds our main subject without providing ‘relevant’ information. That is to say, that it is not the protagonist in itself because it lacks weight, is flat, or contains very little information. If you need more information about it, click here.
6. Simplify
You just have to take a look around Instagram to see that minimalism is in fashion. And it’s not hard to see why. The simplicity in the compositions helps us to highlight the center of interest, makes the image easier to read without losing sight and, in short, enhances the message.
7. Work the lines
The lines direct our gaze through the frame as if it were an arrow and are also capable of transmitting many different types of sensations, from speed or strength, to sensuality and peace.
8. Work on the narration
As a photographer, a good resolution that you can make yourself is to never give in to the easy or meaningless image. Why not always try to give our best in any type of image that we are going to take? Even if it is the photo that some tourists have asked us for as a souvenir or the neighbor’s birthday or the beers on duty with your friends… Why not always demand the best from us? 😉
Having said that, remember what is the main objective that we pursue as photographers. You remember? Yes, exactly, our objective is to narrate something, explain a story, a message.
- Give context to your image (emotional, temporal, physical)
- Define a main element
- Curate a good title that defines your image
- Take a look of this article
9. Zoom in closer or forget about zoom
I suppose you have already verified for yourself the bad optical zoom quality of smartphone cameras. Well, you can’t order pears from the elm tree, can you? That is to say, they are small, they weigh little, they fit in a pocket, we always have them on hand when we need them, but of course, remember that the sensor is tiny, and the optics are the same… So these cameras give us enough quality for the size they have. That is why you should not even consider that the zoom exists. If you want something closer, just come closer. It is also a fantastic photographic exercise that will make you learn a lot and will teach you to love fixed focal points even more 😉
10. Change your point of view
Do not limit yourself to what you see right in front of you, an image can change radically simply by changing the point of view or the perspective from which you take the photograph. In addition, the Smartphone does not weigh anything, which makes it even easier for you when trying high-angle or low-angle points of view without breaking your back like with a SLR 😉
11. Work the different planes
We don’t have something as wonderful as the aperture in our Smartphone lenses, do we? The cameras of our phones usually have a good depth of field but they don’t allow us to play to isolate the protagonist just by opening the diaphragm as we could do with our SLR camera or similar. It is because of that take care of the background and be attentive to all the elements that appear in the scene is essential in mobile photography. In addition, the different planes allow us to work the image depthwhich can also be a very interesting resource in photography.
You know, if something doesn’t convince you, don’t give up or think you’ll cut it out when you edit, move it so it’s out of the frame.
12. Hold the phone well
We already commented at the time how important it was to hold your SLR camera well, because although it may not seem like it to you, this also applies to photography with a Smartphone. Hold with both…