Your smartphone is your on-the-go computer. Regardless of the operating system (Windows, Android, or iOS), it will have a camera. The quality of photos taken is not as good as those taken with a DSLR, but with a little know-how, photos can be taken that are of a much similar quality.
Chances are, your phone is with you all the time. Take some time to get familiar with your device’s camera settings and you could find yourself taking high quality, print-worthy photos to beautify and personalise your wall space.
Use the F-Stop
The F-stop is the aperture setting for your camera lens. This is what controls the amount of light that passes through the lens. The lower the number, the blurrier the picture. That can be good and bad. Depending on what you are trying to take a photo of or avoid showing in the photograph. Like, blurring out household clutter in the background.
Turn on gridlines
On most devices, the camera app has the gridlines feature disabled. To enable it, go into the camera settings and toggle on the gridlines function. It adds 9 tiles over your screen when you are viewing the shot in the camera app.
The gridlines serve an important purpose in photography. They make it easy for you to apply the rule of thirds to your photos. This is a composition feature photographers use to make sure images are not central.
Each grid square is a point of interest. Without the rule of thirds being applied, most users would gravitate toward putting the object of a photo in the centre, which makes for difficult viewing.
The grids applied to the screen lets you place objects of interest within areas of interest when viewing. It adds balance to your photos making them more interesting to look at, perfect for taking photographs that you intend to print and frame to display as a focal piece in your home.
Look for opportunities to take shots using leading lines
Leading lines in photography are like paths to guide the viewer’s eye to the focal point of the picture. These can be vertical, horizontal, diagonal or converging lines.
When out and about, the next time you feel the need to snap a photo, consider the lines available. They could be shadows, lamp posts, fence posts, or lines of trees. As an example, if you were taking a stroll through a mature woodland that had an enclosure of wildlife, rather than simply taking a photo of the wildlife, you could turn on the camera gridlines, position the animal at the top of the grid, and position yourself in an area that showed the fencing leading up to the enclosure.
The fencing would become the leading line guiding the eye up to the wildlife positioned at the top of the photograph.
Edit to apply colour to greyscale
A huge advantage of digital images is the ability to manipulate them. Various image editing apps can be installed on devices, or you can upload photos to image editing software either online or software that runs on PCs and laptops.
One tap of a button can transform any image into black and white. From there, you can then add a touch of colour to the primary point of interest in the photo. The result is a monochrome image with a burst of colour applied that puts the object in the photo front and centre.
Don’t zoom, crop
When taking photos on phones, it is tempting to use the zoom function. Resist the temptation. It is better to get closer to a subject than it is to zoom in from a distance. The quality is more noticeable in printed photos. The zoom function can make your photos appear pixelated and grainy. To zoom in on photos taken from a distance, crop the image and then enlarge it.