How to take a great photograph using your phone

I might be showing my age here, but I remember well the days of using a film camera, taking the photos, winding it on and hoping I got a good one. Then along came digital cameras that you would always take on a night out at Uni, as phone cameras were just so grainy and bad, but now phone cameras are amazing, so much better than so many old digital cameras, and handy as they’re always by your side.

In fact, they’re so good that these days you can take most of your business’ photos (whether product or service based) with your phone and they’ll be perfectly good enough.

To make sure they’re as good as possible, here are my top tips for taking great photographs using your phone:

Good Lighting

The number 1 key thing to make sure your photos are good is to have good lighting. Yes, you can edit to improve it, but nothing beats having a nice diffused light. If you’re taking photos of products, ideally you don’t want them to be casting any shadows. Using blank sheets of white paper over the window can really help to diffuse direct sunlight but keep the brightness.

Focus

Always tap the screen with where you want to focus the photo. There’s nothing worse than taking a photo and looking back later to see that everything is blurred, it’s just not fixable. If your phone offers portrait mode as well, focussing well on the part of the image you want to be clear can get that professional looking blurred background for you.

Timer (if needed)

If you look in the settings on your phone camera there will be a timer button to have (usually) a 3 or 10 second delay. Perfect if you’ve got your phone on a tripod or propped up and you want to be in the photo without it clearly looking like a selfie. Enough time to press the button and get into the ideal position.

Clear background

When taking a picture of a product, you want the product to be the focus of the image, and the easiest way to make sure that people are looking just at the product rather than being nosy at your house behind it, is to make sure you have a nice clear background. The same goes for shots of you as well, background clutter draws the eye away from the most important thing. You.

Take multiple shots

This is one that I am very grateful for, especially compared to the film camera days! Now photos are stored digitally, take a load of photos every time, especially of people. There will always be one with someone’s eyes closed, or pulling a strange face, if you take 20 shots, you’ll most likely have a good one in there!

Avoid zooming in

The one thing phone cameras aren’t good at is zooming in. It’s not like a digital camera where the lens pops out to zoom in, on a phone camera you’ll probably end up with a grainy image. You’re much better off taking the picture zoomed out and then cropping it later to fill the frame.

Use the rule of thirds

A classic photography rule is the rule of thirds. Your phone camera will have the option to have the lines on the screen whilst taking the picture, which helps you to arrange the composition to adhere to the rule of thirds. You want to have the subject in the left or right third of the image, leaving the other two thirds more open. Have a play with this one, but it’s an easy way to make your photos look more professional rather than having everything centralised all the time.

Relax!

And finally, don’t forget to relax. The beauty of digital photography is that nothing is permanent, you can always delete stuff and you can keep practising and having fun until you get the shot you’re after.

So, there are my top tips for taking a great photograph using your phone. Hopefully it’s inspired you to get taking more photographs, and sharing them. If you use any of my tips I’d love to see the results, tag me on social media @LucyCritchleyVA so I can see them!