How To Amp Up Your Phone Photography!

This week for Appy Friday we are teaching you how to amp up your photography when using your phone. Whether you’re trying to get the perfect Instagram image, or just making memories there’s something in here for everyone. From clip-on lenses to give you higher quality images, to simple photo editing apps to help assist you in enhancing your images.

Clip-on lenses

The first way to improve your phone photography is by using clip-on lenses to transform the look and quality of your images. These clip-on lenses range in price massively for £5-£85 so it all depends on how much you are willing to spend on these accessories, for example, one of the cheaper clip-on lenses is the Magniband macro lens for the majority of smartphones which can be bought for just £5.62. A more expensive alternative is the Olloclip 4-in-1 lens for iPhones 4-6s plus. However, this lens is £69.95 but the price reflects the quality of the product and this lens has 4 different capabilities.

Lighting

The lighting is vital for making your photography good when using a phone to capture images. The best lighting for photography on a phone is soft natural lighting. If the image you wish to take is in the dark, then rather than using your phones flash to take the image, use a torch. Either from another phone or a physical torch so that the focal point of the image is photographed in a much nicer way and isn’t too harsh or sharp.

Use the rule of thirds

When creating the set up for your images, try and use the rule of thirds so that you have a better composition for your images. When the rule of thirds isn’t possible try and use symmetry to create the best looking images when using your phone. More information about the rule of thirds can be seen here.

Don’t zoom. Crop afterwards

When photographing something far away, don’t use your zoom as it makes the image quality much poorer. So, when taking an image of a landmark, for example, it may be slightly far away so just take the image from where you are with a good composition. Then, later on, put the image in an editing suite to crop the image to ensure it’s still of the highest quality.

Photo editing apps

There are many photo editing apps available in the app store. One of my personal favourites for filters is VSCO. Some other great photo editing apps are Google Snapseed, Adobe Photoshop Lightspeed and Adobe Photoshop fix. So once you’ve got your perfect image, you can give it some touch ups to enhance your photos.

So, there are our top tips to help you take incredible images without having to carry around a big bulky camera and associated kit. Personally, I love using a clip-on lens and VSCO to take and edit all my photos, so that they are the best they possibly can be. Let us know if you either try some of these tricks or have some more of your own.