Take Better Photos on Your Phone with These 10 Hacks
With Text Event Pics, taking photos for an event is easy! Just snap with your phone, text to your unique event phone number and collect memories. Phones take amazing photos nowadays, eliminating the need for high-tech, high-priced cameras that require multiple lenses and bags to haul. For your next event, check out these easy ways to take amazing photos with your camera phone before you snap.
1) Focus on one subject at a time.
Focus on one interesting subject. This may be the bride, your boss or your new BFF. Maybe it is even of an object (hello champagne!) that has just the right lighting (see tip 8). Tip: Try not to have the subject fill the entire frame – 2/3 of the photo should be negative space (see tip 3). And ensure you tap the screen of your phone to focus the camera on your subject. Good to go!
2) Use gridlines.
A great tool that comes with your smart phone are gridlines. Simply turn on the camera’s gridlines and use them to align your photos. This will apply the “rule of thirds,” which is a composition principle that states that an picture should be broken down into thirds, both horizontally and vertically, so you have nine parts in total. This will give you more balanced, level, photos.
To switch the grid on …
- iPhone: Go to “Settings,” choose “Photos & Camera,” and switch “Grid” on.
- Samsung Galaxy: Launch the camera app, go to “Settings,” scroll down and switch the “grid lines” option to “on.”
3) Embrace negative space.
Negative space allows your subject in a photo to stand out and shine. But what is negative space, really? It is anywhere that is expansive, such as open sky, a wall, water or an empty field or event space. Utilize it!
4) Find different perspectives.
Show the world a different perspective. Play with unexpected angles to create illusions of depth or height. If you take a photo and find the perspective is a little askew or tilted, you may want to use the SKRWT photo editing app.
5) Look for symmetry.
Utilize those gridlines from tip #2 to create an image that can be divided into two equal parts. Symmetry can be unique and pleasing to the eye, and offers a creative play on finding balance.
6) Play with color blocking.
Play with splashes of color through the art of black and white. Color blocking achieves a similar goal as negative space, in that it can help a single subject stand out. A great app for this is called Touch Color, which automatically converts photos to black and white, and then lets you fill in the parts you would like to color.
7) Avoid zooming in.
Zooming in can make the photo appear grainy, blurry or pixelated, therefore we highly recommend not using your fingers to expand the photo before you take a shot. Instead, it is better to get a closer shot of your subject and optimize or crop the photo later.
8) Use natural light.
Smartphone flashes can make a photo appear overexposed and alter color hues. Rather than using a flash, utilize natural light. Sometimes natural light can even be found after dark, offering fun shadows to play with using building or traffic lights. After capturing the shot, you can use the exposure tool to lighten the photo in a photo editing app.
9) Take candids.
Make memories more interesting and capture the moment with candids rather than posed shots. This can help capture emotion, and great unexpected pics. To do this effectively, take as many photos as possible, and then select the best one(s).
10) Editing is OK.
Photo editing can be a crucial component to really great photos. Whether you need to adjust the lighting, shadows, color hue, or just put a filter on it, editing allows you to give a photo it’s own look. For some great editing tools, check out “The Best Instagram Filters for Every Beauty Complaint“, the iPhone photos app or Pho.to.
