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Almost everyone now owns a smartphone, and most smartphones boast decent cameras. However, it’s far too easy to shoot bad photos on your smartphone. Especially if you just point and shoot with no thought about what you’re doing. Thankfully, there are techniques you may employ to help you take better smartphone photos.
Composition Is the Key to Smartphone Photography
For me, while there are plenty oftricks you’re able to use when taking photos on your mobile, smartphone photography is all about composition. And while this is also true of other forms of photography, it’s especially true for smartphone photography. Let me explain why.
First, what do we mean by composition? For the unaware among you, composition refers to how you as the photographer arrange the components in the photo. It can also be referred to as framing, and being aware of what you’re shooting and how you’re framing things is the key to taking exceptional smartphone photographs.
As you can see in the example pairing below, one photo is just a quick snapshot of a church, while the other is a photograph I’m proud of. And all it took was for me to consider the composition, allowing the buildings either side to draw the eye in, and capturing the whole height of the church against an overcast sky.
Understanding composition, and then applying what you’ve learned, is what separates people who merely take photographs from photographers. For some of you, good composition will come naturally, while others will need to learn composition through techniques and tips.
The key tenet is to consider the composition of a shot before you press the shutter button. An extra 10 seconds spent at that moment can be the difference between taking a photo that merely captures a moment in time and taking a photo that could be considered art. At the very least, you’ll be more keen to show these photos to other people.
3 Composition Techniques for Smartphone Photos
There are a host ofways to improve the composition of your photos, with certain things to look for in the frame. Here are just a few composition tips when shooting photos on your smartphone to get you started.
1. Employ Leading Lines
Leading lines are components of a photo used to draw the viewer’s eyes into the shot. Think of a path or road leading to the subject of the shot, hills pointing their way to the peak, or a bridge pointing to a cityscape. The point is to not leave any room for doubt as to where you want your viewer to focus their attention. Show them using elements of the photograph.
2. Use the Rule of Thirds
The rule of thirds is probably the best-known composition technique, and its name is somewhat self-explanatory. It suggests placing important elements of your photo on the lines a third of the way up, down, to the left, and/or to the right of an image. This is a simple yet extremely effective way of adding aesthetic interest to a shot, which is why it’s so commonly used.
3. Fill the Whole Frame
A photograph comprises multiple elements, not just the main focus. So, be sure to use the whole frame, including interesting elements. The best way of doing this is looking to the edges of the screen when framing your shot. Is there a lamppost, tree, person, or building that could add interest to the overall image? Then adjust your position or focus to include it.
3 Tips to Help With Photography Composition
There are certain shortcuts you may take to help with photography composition. Below are a trio of really simple tips to help you get started improving the composition of your photos.
1. Enable the Grid Lines
To help with composition, the first thing you should do is enable the grid lines on your smartphone’s camera app. Most will offer various different layouts, with a 3x3 grid best for the rule of thirds, but others good for alternative techniques. This may even include a golden ratio grid which divides your screen into a ratio of approximately 1.618 to 1.
2. Shoot From Different Angles
If possible, shoot your subject from multiple angles. If you’re shooting a landscape with elements far into the distance, this won’t necessarily be possible, but for human subjects or buildings, it will. Different angles will change the face, size, and/or texture of your subject. But it will also affect what other elements are in the background.
3. Take Multiple Photos
Now that you know how important composition is, and some quick tips to help you with it, I would encourage you to shoot multiple photos every time you shoot something. If you’re worried about storage, you can always delete some afterward, but at least you’ll have multiple shots to select from. And I guarantee that one will stand out above the others.
If All Else Fails, Fix Things in Post Editing
While composition is the key to great smartphone photography, thankfully, you’re able to fix things in post. So, while it helps immensely, it isn’t always necessary to capture exactly what you want to capture at the time of shooting.
There are a host offree image editors available on your mobile, and all of them give you the option to change the way an image looks long after you’ve moved away from the subject you’re shooting. My personal favorite, and the image editor I would recommend to everyone reading this, is Snapseed. Despite being owned by Google, Snapseed is available oniOSas well asAndroid, and is completely free to use, with no features hidden behind a paywall.
Above are two examples of what can be achieved by editing. The original photo was good, but one has been enhanced to make the colors pop, and the other to make everything black and white and overexposed. Both were based on an original photo that I had already cropped to improve the overall composition.
Whether you use Snapseed or otherwise, the point is you may change the composition of a photograph by editing it after the fact. Options include cropping the image to make better use of leading lines, employing the rule of thirds, or filling the frame. You can also rotate the image, change the perspective, focus on a subject to obscure other elements, and much more besides.
While it’s always better to consider the composition of a photo at the moment you shoot it, editing it with aplomb can save it from only being worth deleting.
