However, the principles behind good photography havent changed much since the days of silver halide film. As good as smartphone camers editing software are getting, you still need to pay attention to the key elements of good photography if you want a quality picture. My journey can help. I knew zilch about taking good photos until I became addicted to mobile technology. Coming away from a trip or a night out with great pictures thanks to my xel (one of many good phones out there) has fueled my desire to learn more. If you’re a total newbie like I was, or even a fairly experienced amateur, the following photos advice should give you some inspiration new ideas. For instance, I find HDR to be essential, camera software continues to evolve well to take advantage of the capbilities. I also like to turn on the grid because I’m pretty bad at getting the subject properly aligned without it. It makes it easy to compose a shot using the rule of thirds. The specific environmental settings (cloudy, sunny, etc.) can sometimes help under those conditions, but I typically find a good HDR image in the right lighting will get the job done. The image on the left did not use HDR. en the idoors is properly exposed, the bright outdoors is overexposed. On the right, the photo is far more balanced, as the phone automatically combined a shot where the outdoors was exposed properly with one where the indoors was exposed properly. It’s not perfect (I’d opt for a little color white balancing) but with HDR you can get a much better starting place. Especially for all the places those pesky cats can end up. This picture is great because one set of flowers really sts out, with the rest of the background slightly blurred. On most phones, you can touch the screen to select a focal point. Try it out to see if you can get a similar effect. You’ll want to take a lot of pictures when trying this, as different cameras are better at keeping focused on the object than others. The effect is more pronounced as you move closer to your subject, but get too close you can lose focus entirely. The toddler’s left h is a little blurry, in post-production I would typically brighten things up. But it’s presented here in raw form to give a more real-world example of the makings of a good shot. ok for color, think about how it can enhance the subject or if it can be too distracting. th flash, you’re liable to wash out the foreground or create needless flare. This is why if you know you don’t want flash, you shouldn’t just leave this option set to auto. Sometimes the camera will use it when you don’t want it, the result won’t turn out as mood-setting as this image. This picture illustrates the concept, with the trail dominating the foreground then going off into the background. It’s a nice way to capture a scene, as when you look up from the path you’re treated to the majestic Bridalveil Fall. ghting matters here too—one could argue for brightening the image a little, if the sun was cooperating you’d get even more of the falls in the picture. You can repair some of this with editing, but paying attention to light will also help prevent the effect. As you’ll see in the next slide, this image turned out far more brown off-color than it looks in real life. It’s also a good reminder to use this as part of a mental checklist of what to look for after taking a picture, so you don’t walk away from the scene put all the pressure on your photo editing app. Depending on your camera app, there may be a color temperature setting you can adjust to make sure the white parts look, well, white. ite balance is key, but if you don’t get the right shot the first time, is here to help. otos recently made this one of its available automatic tweaks with a recent update. So while you’ll want to pay attention to this feature, you can also lean on many of the automatic editing tricks found with otos other software. I was surprised to see how the background lights really glowed, giving this a rather picturesque effect. Snow is always a good place to start when you’re looking for great outdoor images, so even if you follow good principles take time to learn the editing menu see what’s possible by taking a lot of shots from the same location. The lights don’t glow quite as well, although they’re still shots that give you a particular atmosphere mood that only comes about from after analyzing the picture. The flash is useful when you have a subject with a light behind it, like someone sting in front of a christmas tree or a brightly lit lmark at night. The camera will often expose for that bright light, leaving the face dark featureless. If your subject is backlit, try using the flash to even things out. You could likely tweak some of this in editing, but you have more options if you better capture the foreground by putting in a burst of light. Don’t let the fact that it’s light outside stop you from considering the flash. You’ll see this in the next shot, which delivers a better quality than the one here. It’s not bad, but the birght sun causes the sky to be overexposed, as the camera tried to balance the exposure for the building. Bright lights harsh shadows can mess up your photos, whether your subject is a human, plant, or building. In particular, try to avoid taking photos of someone’s face in bright direct sunglight. You’ll get hard shadows across their eyes nose, ruining their features. ok for a shady spot.
