1.) Apps – Apps are a great way to create quality photos using your iPhone. Apps are great to assist you with color, contrast, and even depth of field in some cases. It seems like sometimes taking a picture with your iPhone produces a very flat, very blah, image. Using these apps you will be able to edit some very creative and very interesting pictures. One of the most popular photo apps right now is instagram which is great to give your photos that indie, retro, hip, vibe. My absolute favorite though is camera+ which gives you some ready-made photo effects but also lets you tweak the lighting, the contrast, the crop, and the list goes on and on.
A before and after of a picture I took of my friends on Beury Beach. I used the camera+ app to edit it.
2.) Rule of Thirds - Don’t forget that even though you are using your iPhone (or any smartphone for that matter) you should still think about the rules of photography, and one of those rules is the Rule of Thirds. Simply put, this rule states that when taking a picture imagine a 3 x 3 grid on top of the picture and place the subject where the lines of that imaginary grid intersect. In the picture below you’ll see a simple picture of the beach in Jersey. I purposely put the subject in the photo in the upper left hand corner with the line of the sand right where one of the imaginary grid lines would be. Doing this creates visually appealing pictures for even the simplest subjects.
Jersey shore pic following the rule of thirds and edited with Instagram
3.) Use your phone’s focus – A great feature of the iPhone’s camera is that you can tap on whatever you want to be focused. This not only adds depth to your photos, but it also allows for some creativity! Here is a shot that I took of my friend Abby using the manual focus.
my friend Abby at work. Edited with the camera+ app
4.) Get creative with angles – when taking pictures you don’t have to just point and shoot. Even with a smart phone you can adjust the angle in which you take the picture by just a slight rotation of the position of your hands. This is one of the easiest things to get really creative with!
on a bench in Rittenhouse square. Edited with Instagram
5.) Fill the frame – Get up close and personal with your subject. Try to fill the frame to the best of your ability without cutting things at awkward angles.
Eiffel Tower in Paris. Edited with Instagram
6.) Panorama! - A lot of people with iPhones don’t know that it’s actually quite simple to take a panorama using a panorama app. The one below is a little crappy but it still shows how cool your pictures could be in panorama format!
a beach in Barcelona taken with 360 app
