2022
Step 1 Composition.
You see something you want to photograph and reach for your phone. While you’re doing this think of the composition of the photo. What your eye and camera see are not the same, although developments in phone software mean your camera is coming ever closer to matching what your eye sees. Remember that the viewer will look around the finished image guided by what you include, and usually in a particular order. They will look for faces and figures. They will be drawn to bright areas,so avoid bright skies in the background.Take your photos in the golden hour if possible, that's around sunset or sunrise, and avoid using flash if possible. People will also be drawn to subjects in focus, rather than ones that are blurred.
Other aids to composition include: using leading lines, such as a path that guides the viewer to the subject, and using the rule of thirds, which involves placing the strong horizontal lines (e.g. the horizon) or vertical items of interest (e.g. a person) a third of the way into the composition. These are tried and tested methods. The main takeaway points for composition are to place your subject in the frame and look at the background before you take the shot. Basically,you are trying to simplify the final composition so that the viewer’s eye is drawn to the main subject.
Step 2. Taking the photograph.
Once you have the image on screen, touching the screen at any point will let the camera focus and get the best exposure for that area. If the exposure isn’t what you want then drag your finger down the scale at the side, to either decrease or increase it. If you’re taking a night shot and you want a moody look then underexposing will save detail in the shadows and create that look.
Some phone cameras have a built in portrait mode which will blur out the background. This helps to isolate the subject and can be really effective.
You might also have a night photography setting on your phone camera which gets around the problem of graininess. Behind the scenes the camera takes multiple shots and merges them together, to even out the grain, and produces a high quality image.
Step 3. Processing the image
You can download a number of free apps to enhance the photograph you’ve taken. Try Snapseed which apart from cropping, levelling the horizon and adjusting exposure levels has some advanced features such as adding text, removing distractions (healing), altering the perspective and adding a frame to your photo. The Lightroom app is easier to use but with fewer free features. If your camera file size exceeds the limit for uploading to a post you can reduce the size in Snapseed when you save it by changing the default size in settings.
Final tips.
You can improve the quality of your photograph if you set your phone to take the biggest file size it’s capable of creating. In the settings of your camera, which you can usually access using the “more” options, click advanced settings and set the back camera resolution to the highest number of megapixels. If you take selfies increase the front camera file size.
If your photographs are blurred it might be that your lens isn’t clean. Lens cleaning cloths are widely available to fix this.
Finally, if you post regularly it’s worth developing a style that makes your photographs recognizable as yours. Look at other photographers for inspiration, but there are many different ways to take a photograph to enable you to develop your own style. It might be using filters, a common subject or unusual angles. If you have any more tips post them in the comments section below.
