Just happened to be scrolling through my Facebook feed and came across a suggested post, which is sort of an advertisement for the "iPhone School Of Photography." What was interesting was the fellow in the video was not trying to sell the school, but was actually giving real, usable information for free. I checked this all out and it all worked perfectly. (I always check out EVERYTHING I read on any social media because it is wholly unedited and therefore needs to be vetted carefully for factual information because there is a great deal of dis-information out there).
At any rate, this person was talking about making better images with your iPhone, but the advice is well-taken for just about any type of photography. It consists of many things I have been trying to outline in the more than a thousand articles I have already published during the last several years.
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Try photographing things from different angles. If you are simply raising your camera to your eye level, you are just getting the same shot everyone else gets. Try a higher or lower angle.
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Try as much as possible to determine your own exposure. Don't let the camera do it for you. This requires you to set your camera on MANUAL or override any other camera's automatic settings. On an iPhone, it requires you to FIX certain settings in order to make the camera do what you want it to. You can often do this by tapping the screen and holding it for a second or two.
If the camera was on automatic for this shot, it would have tried to lighten up the entire scene.
- Think about what kind of photographs you wish to make. Do you want the foreground in focus or out of focus? Do you want the sky lighter or darker? Do you want to highlight any particular part of the scene? These are the types of questions you need to ask yourself while you are making pictures if you want them to be really satisfying.
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Look for interesting photographic elements like reflections, sunrises and sunsets, silhouettes - anything that creates an unusual lighting.
Try thinking about these things and your knowledge of photography as well as your images will improve dramatically!
William Lulow
William Lulow is a commercial portrait and corporate photographer in the Greater New York Area. His clients include IBM, Swiss Re, Westchester Magazine and Michael Baker International (Engineering), among many others. William is also a certified teacher of photography having been an adjunct professor at New York's New School For Social Research. He publishes daily blog articles on photography. His goal is to raise people's awareness of photographic principles in order to better their photographic efforts.