A common myth in photography is that to take beautiful photos you have one of those fancy cameras with a big lens. I am here to tell you that is completely false! You don’t need anything more than your phone to start practicing your photography skills! Besides who wants to carry around a hefty camera everywhere? The best shots often come when we least expect it and with only a moments notice! So, learning how to shoot with your phone is a critical skill in this fast-paced world!
I went to Grand Tetons and was able to practice my phone photography skills! All photos were taken on an iPhone 13 and edited in Snapseed and Colourtone.
Point of View
Most of the time the only difference between a good photo and a great photo is changing your point of view. I love the example above! I found the most beautiful flower patch off of Jackson Lake. Instead of standing upright like the before picture, I changed my perspective and got down low. Look at what a difference that made! Then, I put this photo into my editing app Colourtone and used one of the free presets called Clean 1. This preset just slightly edited the picture. However, when using presents and filters I never leave them unchanged that way the edit becomes my own original work. For this photo I bumped up the contrast, exposure, vibrance, and lowered the shadows. The main reason I love this app is because it has HSL sliders that are included for free. I used the sliders to slightly adjust the green, yellow, and blue in the photo to my liking.
Here are a few phone photos I took that demonstrate a unique perspective.
Shallow Depth
Who doesn’t love a good portrait?! I am all heart eyes for how this photo turned out. Your phone can create an amazing shallow depth look on it’s own by using portrait mode. As you can see in the before pictures, the regular camera was quite wide and there was a lot in focus. With a simple swipe to portrait mode the camera automatically blurred out the background when I moved the camera closer to the subject. There was also a fence in the background that I wanted to cover up. So I picked one of the flowers and placed it in front of the lens. You can still see a bit of the fence, but that could be photoshoped out easily. However for the purposes of today, I want to show you what you can do with only your phone!! Again I added this photo to the same editing app Colourtone to add some warm and decrease the shadows. Very minimal edits were required because the lighting was beautiful!!
Panorama
You can never go wrong with a good panorama! Our eyes can see so much more than our phone can capture normally, which is why a panorama can be such a big help! One tip when taking panoramas is to hold still but move quickly. The longer you take to move your phone from side to side, the more camera shake you will get. Again, this photo required very minimal effort. I added a preset but lowered its overall amount on the photo. Then I increased the brightness and the contrast a little bit.
Long Exposure
You can also do really pretty long exposure photos. If you have an iPhone, change your camera to live. This will take a 3 second long video. Then within the photos app you can click on the live button and there will appear a drop down menu. Then chose long exposure. This will blur anything that was moving,. Then I opened the photo in Snapseed and used the HDR Scape tool to add definition to the water and rocks below. Isn’t it beautiful?
Our phones are truly amazing and have so many capibilities! Go out, explore, and try to capture something new using your phone. I promise the results won’t let you down! Leave a comment letting me know which photo was your favorite!
