Your iPhone has a powerful little camera on it, and while it might not replace a full DSLR, it can still provide a great way to capture memories. If you’re taking photos with your iPhone already, don’t you want to take better pictures? I’m the resident photography maven at Apple’N’Apps, and I hope these tips help you, even a little bit.
1. Keep Your Camera At Home
You won’t get better at taking iPhone photos if you keep bringing your deluxe digital camera around with you. Think of an upcoming event you might want to save for a more deluxe camera, and then choose your iPhone instead. When the need arises for better photos, you will more carefully think about your iPhone photography, and consequently take better pictures.
This tip is two-fold, and while I’m not suggesting to leave your iPhone at home. Try to go for a period without using your iPhone camera, or any camera for that matter. Look at the world around you to kind of frame things in your mind, and identify photo moments, and angles without actually snapping photos. Your future photos will benefit from the new perspective you can draw.
2. Shoot Every Day
The first step is something to think about for a week or two, and then you should really get into the habit of shooting every day. You shouldn’t start with this step until you’re ready because practicing the same poor habits won’t result in better pictures. Once you get your mind to think about photographs, it will be easier to take them every day, and to take better pictures. As you take photos every day, you will start to gain a new appreciation of what your iPhone can capture, and the best settings for the best photos. There are some obvious limitations of iPhone photography, namely optical zoom, but understanding this can lead to better photos. Rather than relying on the camera to do all the work, you have to think more about your positioning, timing, and connection with the object you want to shoot.
There are also apps like Photo 365 that help you catalog, and remind you to take photos every day.
3. Back Up Your Photos
Apple offers iCloud Photo Stream for all the photos you take with your iPhone as an automatic online back-up. All of your photos are always stored online, and automatically transferred to your computer, which works especially well with iPhoto on the Mac. You can also use services like Dropbox or Flickr, as an added layer of back-ups, and use a hard drive back-up as well. Photos can capture memories that you can’t get back elsewhere, and they can also offer a great time when going back over them.
4. Use Camera Apps
The best part of the iPhone’s camera is that you can improve it with the wide array of photo apps out there. Apps like ProCamera 7, Camera+, and KitCamera let you produce much better results than the stock camera app with features like dual touch exposure and focus, set ISO, burst mode, image stabilization, special modes for shooting scenes, filters, and more. The extra features in these apps can change your whole view on what’s possible with iPhone photography. You also get the full 4” retina display to use as a viewfinder, photo viewer, and editing canvas.
There are also photo editing apps like Apple’s iPhoto, Handy Photo, Aviary, or Flickr to edit the photos after you take them, and sync them online.
5. Keep Notes of Your Photos And Others
Jotting down notes about your photography will benefit your future photography greatly. Use an app like Evernote, which syncs your notes across platforms, and then type out ideas, what modes in the special camera apps work the best, location information, time of day, and any little tips.
Also, if you want to keep notes of other’s photography, use an app like 500px to get some inspiration of potential shoots. Keep track of other photographers, use Pinterest to keep track of particularly interesting photos, and much more.
Overall:
The iPhone can be an all in one photography tool to capture, edit, share, keep notes, find inspiration, set-up reminders, and more. Hopefully you get a little use out of our tips to improve your iPhone photography in 2014.
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