Simple Tips and Tricks to take better photos

(Even with your phone)

Hey everyone! I feel like I haven’t written anything for a while. I’m missing the therapy (it feels like it to me) of sitting at the keyboard, thinking and writing about things that I love, and sharing my ideas with all of you! 🙂 I have a lot 😉

* This is a super long post so depending on the time of day you are reading it, you might want a glass of wine or a cup of coffee. haha. And maybe your camera and or your phone. There are quite a few tips and tricks that also apply to cameras as well as phones.

Are you like me, and love to capture special moments? I don’t believe cameras should just be brought out for special occasions. I believe they should be always at the ready. I also believe that the best photos of families are ones that are not posed, but real, authentic moments. I truly believe that grownups should also be in the pictures taken of your kids and family members. It doesn’t matter if your hair isn’t perfect or Dad didn’t put on a clean shirt, or you didn’t put your makeup on! It’s about being in the moment, and having the memory captured and also something for your kids or family to look back on in years to come. On one of the blogs that I follow (Nesting with Grace) she sets her camera up on a stand, sets the timer, and sits with her kids and reads a book, or any activity, then captures it! Love that!! So break out that cell phone, don’t be scared to get IN the photo, snap away, pick the BEST/FAVORITE ones!! AND , most important PRINT THEM OFF. haha

I have a lot of different interests and hobbies, one of which (the top one probably) haha, is photography. Ever since I was a kid, and this will show my age a bit 😉 I remember when relatives would gather at my grandmothers and someone would have their polaroid camera. If you are from my Moms side of the family and are reading this, you might remember who actually owned the camera?! Anyways, I thought it was the coolest thing, to be able to point the camera at someone, wait just a few minutes for that white piece of square “film” to turn from white to magically having a photo on it!! I’m still amazed to this day really, at how it all works. And I have not just a love of photography, but a love of cameras in general. I have a few vintage ones that I purchased from my Aunts antique shop, (Timeless Treasures in Souris PEI), if you’re in the neighbourhood and want to check her out! I just love that its a piece of history and it was used to capture peoples memories! I’m looking through the viewfinder that was used to capture moments from about 100 years ago, so cool!! *The ones I own are just for decoration, they don’t actually work!

This is turning into a really long story! Sorry, haha…. When I was a teenager, my aunt bought me my first film camera. I used that for quite a while until I had money of my own and bought myself several cameras over the years. I’m a self taught photographer, however, I did take a couple of short courses over the years. I also have learned A TON from my photography friends, and google and you tube are a wealth of information! And actually getting out, taking tons of pictures is the best way to learn.

Now, I, in no way, shape, or form, consider myself a “professional” I’m still learning something every time I pick up my camera and I still google things often and make mistakes often. I use a cropped sensor camera (Nikon D7100, and I have a few different lenses I use depending on what I’m taking a picture of) And I shoot in RAW and edit with photoshop. This might sound Greek to most or all of you, but it at one time was Greek to me as well. haha. I think I will, at some point, do a post about my actual photography equipment, incase anyone is looking to purchase a more expensive camera down the road.

This post isn’t meant for fancy cameras though, but I guess you can tell where my heart is 😉 I wanted to come up with a few simple things that everyone can use, that are basic ” rules”, that can be used with cell phones (because lets face it, everyone has one) or, if you have a fancy camera, they would apply to those as well. These tips are pretty basic, they would probably be one of the first things you would learn if you were in a photography class. So lets get started…..

The most basic rule I can think of is: All rules are meant to be broken! haha (somewhat)….

Lighting

Photography is all about lighting and composition. I actually read something once that said photography is like “Painting with light”. So basically you need a source of light, and an interesting composition, (something interesting that draws your eyes attention). There are many different kinds of “perfect” light, it kind of depends on the type of photo you are taking, but If you practice and take lots of photos in many different kinds of light, you eventually get really good at finding it, I promise. (I’m still not confident that I’m there yet!) Is any of this making sense? haha

Golden Hour

There is a reason that most photographers go out in the early mornings and close to sunset, it’s called the Golden Hour! About an hour (roughly) after the sun rises, and then in the evening about an hour before sunset. The light is so pretty and soft, it doesn’t cast harsh, unflattering light on your subject. These are perfect times to head out. When I am out taking pictures during this hour, I generally take the pictures with my subjects back to the photo (I’m facing the sun) and have the sun not directly in the view of the camera ( you can see examples of this in some of my own photos posted later below). This is not the only or necessarily the best way, just my personal preference.

Photography should be fun, and the BEST way to learn is to actually go out and take lots of pictures, take them in different locations, different times of the day, inside, outside, people, animals, flowers, whatever, just practice, practice, practice!

Shade or Open Shade

Now, it’s a bit unrealistic to head out in the early morning and late evening, if all you want to do is take nice pictures of your kids. haha, if you are outside on a sunny day the BEST place to go, is not the middle of the yard facing the sun. No one looks good squinting into the sun! Head to an area where it is shaded or “open shade”. So an area of shade cast from a house or tree etc. but that is not closed in over the top. Make sense? It also works best if you are also standing in the same shaded area, not out in the bright light. If this even is not an option, just make sure the bright sunlight is not casting harsh shadows on the peoples faces who are in the photo. You could turn their back to the sun, or have them tilt there head at a different angle.

If you are taking pictures indoors, I usually take the person, or item I’m taking pictures of, close to a window that has indirect light. Or depending on the type of photo you want, sun rays coming in for example, (I did say rules were meant to be broken 😉 ) you could go to an area near a window where the suns rays are shining in.

I warned you it was long….

Area of focus

When you see a great photo, and something about it catches your eye, there is clearly a “subject” or an area of interest that the photographer wants you to see. When taking a photo of a person, it should generally be their eyes that are the most sharp or “in focus” (Using a camera, the settings are different, but for this post I’m only talking about the area of focus as it relates to your phones camera) (The iPhone 7 plus specifically because that is what I have) So if you are taking a photo of one person, up close, if you touch the screen, that little box that pops up will be the area that the phones camera focuses on, therefore it is more “in focus” than the rest of the photo. If you are taking a picture of a group of people, I would put the focus on the persons face that’s in the centre.

Exposure

If you are trying out your new SLR camera, there are so so many things to learn about properly exposing a photo, you really do need to practice, practice, practice. And really, I still feel like I’m learning some of them myself so I think I may write another post, specific to this, later down the road on this at a beginner level. Basically, you want to make sure that the darker areas of your photos are able to be seen well and have enough light to see the detail in them all the while making sure the brighter areas are not getting too much light and therefore loosing detail in those areas. Make sense? There is more to it than that but that’s the gist of it. And this rule changes depending on the type of photo you’re taking (confusing I know) I did say rules were meant to be broken! Eg. “moody” type photos would look a bit darker or edgy or a silhouette type of photo would have a bright background and a shadowed silhouette in the front (just a few examples) But if you are just using the camera on your phone, it is much less complicated! I can only show you how to adjust on an iPhone 7 specifically because that is what I have. If you go to your camera on your iPhone (this works in all the modes of the camera eg. photo, portrait, video etc.) If you touch the screen in a darker area, your camera sets the exposure for the dark areas, (so it would set itself to make sure the dark areas have enough light to see the detail in them) therefore making the bright areas brighter as well. Then if you touch a bright area, your camera exposes for the bright area, making the dark areas darker. (If you play around with this in the camera setting it will make much more sense.) So you can see the potential for the difficulty to get a well exposed photo, depending on the light that you are in, which is why lighting is so important. Now, without getting too technical, there are ways to fix it in photoshop. There is a good app that is free and available for phones that I will recommend at the end. You can make the shadows brighter and the “highlights” darker. (Depending on the photo, sometimes it does lower the quality.)

Now, this becomes an issue if you also need to adjust the brightness or darkness of the photo, along with choosing an area of focus (as above). If you touch and hold your finger to the screen for a few seconds, you will see a yellow heading pop up that says AE/AF lock. (Auto exposure/auto focus lock.) So you would touch and hold the screen where you want the camera to focus, when that heading pops up, there will also be a square yellow box with a sun symbol next to it. If you slide your finger up or down on the sun, it will brighten or darken the photo. (Insert wow face) haha. So you can play around with this until you feel comfortable. * Just a reminder, this is iPhone 7 plus specific, I’m not sure about other iPhone models).

Horizons and Rule of Thirds

The most basic rule of composition (composition is basically the way the items or subjects in your photo are arranged so it looks visually interesting)
is the RULE OF THIRDS. The picture is divided into 3 equal parts, horizontally and vertically. So basically if you take your camera screen and make a tic tac toe type of grid on it with 9 squares, that’s the rule of thirds. You want the main focus of your subject to be at one of the intersecting points, not the centre of the screen. If you’re taking a picture of just a persons face you would usually put one of their eyes at one of these points. *Also, try to keep your horizon lines straight, it looks more visually appealing.

This is not one of my pictures but the first one that popped up when I googled rule of thirds. So you can see how much more interesting this is than it would be if the person with the surf board was in the dead centre! This is also a good photo to show the horizon line. The horizon should also never be dead centre in your image. It looks a lot more interesting if it’s along one of those lines as above, either the upper third of the image or the bottom third.

Examples

I thought I would put a few of some recent photos that I took, then you can have an idea of what some of these “rules” actually look like. The following were taken with my Nikon D7100 camera and my 24-70mm 2.3 lens (this may not make sense if you are a beginner, and that’s ok, I didn’t know what any of that meant a few years ago either) and they were edited using adobe photoshop. The rope with my feet photo was edited using Lightroom.

The first photo, the boat Lady Erica is clearly the focus, it’s in the lower/bottom third of the image (Rule of Thirds) It was taken during Golden Hour. You’ll notice that the sun isn’t IN the photo, just the flare of it is.

The second one was taken on an overcast evening, I used a form of composition called “Framing” that I didn’t really get into in this post. The boats are clearly the focal point, and they are located on the upper third (Rule of thirds) of the image.Now don’t think that I pick up my camera, take one picture and call it a day. haha. Far from it. I took several photos of this one scene, when I walked up to this area I didn’t even have this in mind. I took a few photos, all the while moving myself around until I found an angle that I liked. Then it was edited. 🙂

The third photo was taken on a bright sunny midafternoon day with the sun shining directly on the boat (the sun was behind me) My horizon is straight, although it’s in the middle of the photo, (see I’m not perfect) the boat (the focal point) is to the left third of the image.

This fourth photo was taken during golden hour, the sun is just out of the frame, behind the object I’m taking a picture of. The rope is the obvious focal point, it’s kind of in the upper third of the image, the foreground is blurred and your eye just automatically goes to the pretty turquoise color of the rope. 🙂

This last one was taken in the shaded area of a stack of lobster traps, during golden hour, (although I don’t know if that matters for this particular photo) I positioned my feet for interest. There is not a clear focal point, however, you might notice your eyes go to the bright white shoe that’s in the upper right side of the image.

I’m not saying I’m perfect every time. I still struggle with some of these or other issues every time I pick up my camera, because the location, lighting, subjects etc. etc. are always different. You can go to the same place on different occasions and it will almost always be different.

Don’t “amputate” people

That sounds weird. haha But it is a real thing in photography. When you are taking a picture of someone, make sure you aren’t “cutting off” part of their body at an awkward spot. Like, make sure you aren’t cutting off their toes or fingers or feet or hands etc.

Not my photo, but you can see how the one on the left just looks a bit awkward, because his feet are cut off. The one on the right looks more natural. I still have a hard time with this rule myself, but there are tools in your phones as well as in photoshop where you can straighten or crop a photo. So if you do take one where you accidentally cut off some ones feet, it could be saved by using the crop tool under the “edit” settings in your phones camera or photo section and cropping it just a bit different or higher so it “cuts them off” at a more natural area of their body.

I have an iPhone, so I’m not sure about where the settings are on others, but if you go to your photos, click on a photo, and at the top right corner you will see the word edit, If you click it, this is what it looks like. If you take a photo and it’s crooked or you accidentally cut off a body part at a weird angle, you can click the screen where you see the square with the arrows along the bottom of the screen (to the right of the word cancel) and you can crop and straighten by sliding the photo around. You might have to play around with it a bit. Then when it looks right, click done. 🙂

Something else I thought of while taking my selfie, lol, when you turn your camera around to take a selfie, the quality is not as good as when you take the photo facing out. Now this probably depends on what phone you have but on my iPhone 7 plus this is still true.

The first photo was technically taken during Golden Hour but I think it was my selfie mode that gave it poorer quality, and the sun may have actually been too low or not close enough into the frame of the photo to give me enough light.

The photo below (another selfie) is better quality because even though I’m not actually outside close to sunset, I’m in my kitchen in the mid afternoon, right next to the window, so there is lots of bright light. The sun isn’t shining directly in that window onto my face. And my eye on the left of the screen is at one of the intersecting points of the Rule of thirds.

Learn with others

Most, maybe all of the photographers I know, who are passionate about it, love to share their knowledge and I’m sure wouldn’t mind answering any questions you have. I know I don’t mind. But I find it much easier to do in person. If you checked around where you live, you’ll probably find that there are groups of photographers who get together every now and again and go out shooting together.

Frame free of clutter

Any picture that is capturing a memory, is a great picture. But….

The better ones have clear focus areas, basically, make sure what your taking a picture of has a clear “subject”, not a busy picture where your eyes aren’t sure where to look.

Now, this isn’t one of my photos. I’m sorry if it’s one of someone reading this. (There is nothing wrong with the girl or the photographer, I’m sure it was capturing a special memory but for the sake of this post, its a badly composed photo). It popped up when I googled “Bad Composition” So you can see by looking at this that your eye’s aren’t sure where to look. Is the tree the focus, the girl, the lower part of her hands are cut off, there is a bench in the way, the sun is shining harshly on one side of her face….You get the idea.

Change your perspective

Good photos are snapshots of everyday life, something you might see while browsing through Facebook for example. Now, to me, any photo that’s capturing a memory for or of a loved one is a good photo. But what makes a GREAT photo? Did you every look at a photo that maybe you yourself took or one that you seen and something about it just made you stop and do a double take or hit that love or wow button on Facebook or Instagram? If you go back and look at some of them, I can almost guarantee that they were not taken from an angle that your eyes see everyday. They were probably taken from either down low or from up high, at eye level, or up super close or used some of the many other forms of composition that I didn’t really get into, and won’t in this post because it’s already super long. haha. So if you move yourself around, move your phone/camera around and you will quickly see what I mean.

Try not to use the zoom

Most phones and cameras as well have quite a large zoom range. But the farther away you are from an object or scenery photo, (unless you have a great camera with a great lens and great zoom feature) the poorer the quality will be. Did you ever take your phone to try to get that great sunset photo and use the zoom to bring it closer and truer to life size and it just ends up being grainy looking? That’s why. Now, I’m not saying that you can’t get great photos of scenery with a regular phone/camera. I know that there are some great phones with great cameras in them but for the most part they do turn out to be of poorer quality. I don’t really have a fix for scenery shots as most of them tend to be farther away from you (that’s why it’s scenery) haha. But for everyday pictures of family etc. instead of using the phone or cameras zoom option, just move your body in closer to what you are taking a picture of. Simple fix. 🙂 I can show a few examples (below) My sister was super pumped to be in some pictures for my blog 😉

These are all pretty basic rules to get started but as you take more pictures you will get better and it will be easier, I promise 🙂

* It’s also bad etiquette to take someone else’s photo that they’ve put time and effort into and pass it on as your own. If you are posting on social media, you should always either share the post the photo was in, or give the photographer credit. 😉

Phone examples

These photos were snapped pretty quickly the other day, just for a few examples.

This one was taken in photo mode, I’m a bit of a distance from her, its a bit of an overcast afternoon but you can see that she is squinting a bit from the sun, as she’s directly facing it. The background isn’t all that interesting, and you notice it, more than my sister. It’s just an ok photo. There is nothing interesting about it that draws your eyes in, other than the fact that she is placed along one of the intersecting points for the RULE OF THIRDS.

For these next pictures, we moved to the back of the house, we are in the shade, I switched the camera mode from photo to portrait, so it gives the background a bit of a blur, making my sister more in focus than the background and therefore making her pop a bit more. You can see that your eyes go to her face, which is where they should go. These are not edited, just uploaded directly from my phone. Her face is a bit too bright so I would adjust a bit in Snapseed, (as you’ll read about at the end of this very long post)

Other than the fact that my sister cut off my right hand and part of my left arm haha, you can see how the textured woodpile behind me is slightly blurred, (taken in portrait mode) I’m in focus and my eyes are around one of the intersecting points of the RULE OF THIRDS. The left side of my face is a bit darker than the right because there is a shadow from a portion of the house. (So if you wanted to be really picky, it could be fixed in Snapseed.)

So you can see, just in these quick photos, and the ones I posted above, how much lighting, and angles and composition affect your photos. As well as making sure the picture is free of visual “clutter” as I talked about earlier as well.

What to keep and What to Delete

Now, I think I speak for all photographers when I say, you also need to be selective in what you keep. Although your going out and practicing, taking lots of pictures in all different types of lighting, etc. you should also learn how to be strict with what you actually KEEP. When I go out with my camera, I take tons of photos and just pic the BEST ones to edit and print. No one needs to see 10 photos of the same person/thing that look the same (or almost the same). I check to see if there are some that are blurry, if someone isn’t looking, or making a weird face, I usually delete those. Now if you have a blurry photo or someone in it is making a weird face and it’s the only photo that exists of a special memory, I would definitely keep that one. I’m all about the memories. haha. Just be selective so you don’t have thousands of photos just sitting in your camera/phone, that are basically all the same, does that make sense? Only you know what is special to you!

Photoshop

When I take pictures with my camera, I shoot them as a RAW file, which is basically not even a photo, but a recording of the image (as I programmed the camera to take) of a bunch of data onto the camera card. I then have to edit it in photoshop. You can not print or share a RAW file unless you have editing software to turn it into a jpeg or photo file first, so I do always use adobe photoshop, or most recently, as pushed by my photography friend 😉 I’ve tried using Lightroom. These require monthly membership fees, something that I don’t mind paying because I need it, use it often, and love the results. If you do have a membership, there is also a Lightroom app for your phone, that I have and use occasionally. Most of the photos I take however are with my camera, not my phone. I just find for myself and what I use and do with the photos the options and control over settings and quality are far exceeded on a DSLR camera and then a photoshop program. But for every day photos I do use my phones camera. And there is a free app (I’m fairly certain it was free, I’ve had it for awhile) its called Snapseed. It has very similar settings to adobe photoshop, such as adjusting exposure and there are also different filters available that change the look of your photo. If you download the app, you will have to use it a few times to be comfortable with it. When you open a photo that you’ve taken with your phone, there are 3 options listed at the bottom; 1: looks (which has filters) 2: tools (has tons of options for adjusting your photo to make it look the way you want as well as straightening the horizon line or cropping the photo) and 3: export (where you save your work) .

Save your memories

If you are taking lots of great photos and capturing lots of memories, it would be awful to loose them to a computer or phone crash. So always make sure they are saved on another form of software, other than the one you shot them on. I upload mine to Shutterfly (I talk about it below), I print the extra special ones, (a copy for myself and a copy for friends or family who are either in the photo or who I know would love to have a copy) And I always save to a USB. An external hard drive is a great option as well. (This is on my wish list) haha They actually aren’t very pricy.

Where to print

Now that you’ve taken some great photos in different types of lighting, used good composition, maybe edited them bit, now what? Don’t leave them fester forever in cyber space or your SD card. I read something a bit ago that is so true for todays society “Don’t let your children grow up to be jpeg’s” it’s not my quote, I’m not sure even where I seen it, it just struck me funny! 🙂 Basically meaning, don’t let all those great photos of your kids be forever just a photo file, print them into an actual photo! 😉

The only place I can suggest, (because it’s the only one I’ve used) is Shutterfly. I’m not saying its the best, It’s the only one I’ve really tried, and I’ll tell you why I love it….

• No membership fee
• You have an unlimited amount of pictures that you can upload
• Once you upload they don’t get deleted after so many days (I’ve had hundreds (maybe thousands;)) of pictures on there for years)!
• There are lots and lots of options for photos, photo books, gifts etc.
• The quality of the products is great! * ( The quality of “instant print” machines that are found in stores are not great)!
• They offer sales often, and I think the more you order, the more often they send you a promo code.
• There is also a Shutterfly app!! You download it onto your phone, then upload and order all from your phone!
• It even sends you emails of “Memories” on the anniversary dates that your photos were taken on.

It is a USA based site, so just watch the prices. And I believe you do have to pay duty, if your order is above a certain weight or price.

Phew….Thanks for sticking with me through all my blabbering, hope you learned something! If you want email notifications when I post something new, you can sign up below. Also feel free to write questions or comments below or in the ” Contact Janie-Marie” tab at the top. And if you enjoyed this post and want to share it on Facebook or pinterst, please feel free to do so as well. 🙂

Thanks again.

Happy Snapping!