Top 10 tips for taking photos on your smartphone
Hello, I’m Laura, and I’m a specialist newborn photographer, based in St Ives. I have a boutique baby photography studio close to the river, and capturing your little one’s first year, from as young as 4 days makes my heart sing!
Over the past few months, I have quite literally been out of work and will be unable to return to the studio to work with newborns for a few more weeks yet. This means you’re having to take your own photographs to remember this time, so here are my top tips to help you out.
What’s the first thing you do when you receive your new phone? Test out the camera! Have you got a brand new baby in the family, or little ones full of energy? Then no doubt the camera on your phone gets a lot of usage - especially whilst we have been restricted to our immediate family bubbles and have relied heavily on technology to communicate and share updates with our extended families. It’s undeniable that the most recent smartphones have incredible cameras and some snapshots you capture will remain your favourites for years.
Here are my top 10 tips for taking photos on your smartphone:
Avoid harsh sunlight. Especially when the weather is as glorious as it has been recently and you head out for the day. Harsh sunlight can cause havoc with shadows and squinting if you’re taking photographs of people! Head for a shaded area if you can.
If you are out in the sunlight, make sure the sun is behind your subject. This will also eliminate funny squinting faces!
Use the camera guide on your screen to perfect your composition. Before I got into photography I used to turn the grid off as it was in the way...then I understood the reason for it and suddenly a good composition, centralised subjects and straight horizons improved my photographs no end.
Make sure your lens is clean! This sounds really obvious, but especially if you carry your phone around without a case, or little ones play on it, it’s surprising how grubby it can get.
Make sure your subject is in focus. Camera phones have a very clever autofocus mechanism, but it can get confused sometimes and pick up something in the background. You don’t want to be taking a photograph of a proud little one next to their huge sunflower plant in the garden, yet they are all blurry and your table and chairs in the background are perfectly crisp and clear! If you find your camera isn’t finding the focus, tap your screen where you want the focus to be, and it should correct itself.
If you’re looking to create an artistic shot with a beautifully blurred background, change your camera mode to portrait setting. This adjusts the depth of field. Just remember to change it back again!
Play with angles. Don’t always take your photograph standing up, looking ahead. Look up, down and behind you too - it’s amazing what we miss in our beautiful world! If photographing people, try to get above them - shooting straight up their nose isn’t a very flattering look!
Have fun with reflections, they create some astounding photographs with a little patience.
Is the sun/light behind your subject and making it too dark? Touch your screen and a brightness slider will appear, so you can correct the image before taking the final photograph.
Have fun! Trying to get little ones to stop and smile can be a tricky business and end up leading to false smiles or tantrums! Sometimes no smile at all or simply capturing the moment naturally creates the best photograph.
Added extra - especially for Mums - remember to ask your partner to take photographs of you with the kids too! If not, put time aside to book in with a professional photographer once in a while to create complete family memories to be cherished forever.
My diary is now open for socially distanced outdoor photography sessions - perfect as a Father’s Day gift, celebrating your pregnancy before your baby arrives or just because! For more information, get in touch. You can find my contact details below.
