Long gone are the days of carrying around a point and shoot camera.  Most everyone has a camera phone ready to take those must save moments but sometimes the image doesn’t come out exactly the way you want it to.  I’m going to share a few tips with you to improve your iPhone camera game.

Choose the Display

If you are wanting to share your picture on Instagram, you may want to consider shooting in square mode.  This will ensure that everything that you want in the image, will be just the way you see it on your screen.  I like to keep things consistent so I only share square images on Instagram and I can’t tell you how many times I have gone to crop an image and it cuts off a piece that I really wanted to display.

The Rule of Thirds

Think of the Rule of Thirds as an imaginary tic tac toe board.  Have you ever noticed when watching your favorite show how they always have the subject to the right or to the left but never the middle?  This is why!  It is more pleasing to the eye to see the image this way.  Bonus Tip:  If a person was looking to the right, then I would place them in the left position.  It makes you want to look toward the right to see what they are looking at.

Use the Zoom – Shallow Depth of Field

Want your subject to stand out?  Zoom in a little, tap on the subject you would like to be in full focus.  Notice in the image above, the tiny bloom at the bottom right of the image is a bit blurry.  This is called Bokeh and will help make your images look more professional!  Who doesn’t want that?!

Leading Lines

Do you recognize where I am in this images?  I’ll give you a hint… we were in the city of Austin.

Leading lines can be used in so many ways in photography.  This is where the lines in the image draw your eye to a point in the image.  Notice how this image makes you want to look in the center of the photo.  You could use train tracks, roads, boardwalks, windows, and oh so much more!  Get creative!

Leading Lines & I thought it was cool

Do you see how these brownstone homes create a line straight to the person walking their dog?  Living in Texas, you don’t have many opportunities to walk in the snow, so I decided embrace Boston and grab a coffee when I passed this street and thought…how perfect!  I have no idea who this person is but they are in one of my most favorite iPhone pictures ever.  Sometimes, you just got to take a picture of something you think looks cool.  ha!

Cut the Distractions

And Find the Light

Chic-Fil-A anyone?!  Notice in the first image, there is a lot going on.  You see people in the background, our delicious sandwiches waiting to be consumed, and we have horrible shadows on our faces.  We were sitting in one of the last booths and were facing a wall.  The window was just a little behind our booth as well as too close to Philip!  By moving to the other side of the booth, the light was shining nicely on our faces and I had Philip hold the phone a little closer to us to crop the food out of the picture.  Boom!  Huge difference!  Our faces are nicely exposed and we look amazing!  🙂

Turn the flash off- Windows are our friends!

I can’t stress enough how much opening the blinds will improve your iPhone photos!  My pups can’t help but to want to be involved.  This image is brought to you by Emie & Maddie!  haha!  If I had the flash on instead of using the window light, this image would have had crazy shadows as well as a weird color cast.  Using the window light allowed the final image to look very natural!  It is one of my favorites and is making me want to make myself an iced white mocha

So what do you think about these tips?  Did you already know some of them or are you excited to try a few of these out? I’d love to see your images and what creativity strikes you.  Share them on Instagram and tag me!  @cindymedick  Talk with you soon!

xoxo

PS.  Forward this post to a friend who may find this useful!  Happy snapping!