4 Easy Ways to Elevate Your iPhone Photos

How old were you when you had your first cell phone? I’m recalling my small Samsung Juke swivel phone that I had about 10 years ago (back in the days of T9 texting). It was bright teal, couldn’t have been more than an inch wide, had a turn wheel to select items from the menu, and swiveled to open. In these days, you had to carry around your cell phone, digital camera, and iPod. Luckily, cell phones have advanced quite a bit over the last decade, and capturing your daily activities on them is easier than ever. Today I’ll share with you a few quick tips to take your iPhone photos to the next level. 

If you’re anything like me, you probably find yourself snapping photos of your kiddos, meals, pets, or even yourself with friends or a spouse throughout the day. You likely even share these photos through text message, social media, or in a photo album. Of course, I believe that hiring a photographer to capture your annual family photos for holiday cards, milestones, and big life moments is one of the best investments you can make. However, I know that it’s not reasonable to have a professional photographer follow you around day in and day out – heck, I don’t even lug around my DSLR camera each day. But, what if you could elevate the photos you take on your phone to the next level? Let’s consider these four easy tricks to capturing quality cell phone pictures that you’ll for sure want to add to your albums. 

1.     LOOK FOR THE BEST LIGHTING

When I photograph portrait sessions, I always do so in natural light. The same is true when I am using my iPhone at home. I keep my phone camera flash set to off and rarely take photos while using the flash. Open up all those blinds in your house, and try to look for locations that have the brightest natural light coming through the windows. Notice how the lighting changes in different rooms throughout the day. Hint: windows on the east side of your home will have the sun shining through in the mornings, while windows on the west will allow for brighter rooms in the evenings. Once you know which rooms are the brightest, place your subject there (if possible) and face them towards the light/window. Having a window behind the subject can make them difficult to see. If you are outdoors, look for areas of open shade to place your subject. 

Too much back light from window behind subject(s) makes them appear dark

Turn subject’s back away from window for better lighting

2.     CLEAN BACKGROUNDS ARE KEY

Having a plain background that is uncluttered will help you step up your photo game. Sometimes this can be challenging to do, especially if you catch your kids in a cute candid moment. Picture little ones playing, their toys are scattered all across the room, and no matter which way you look there seems to be a mess everywhere. Can you change the angle you are shooting your subject at in order to provide a cleaner background? For example, while my daughter is playing, I will try and change my angle to have a blank wall behind her. If this doesn’t exist in the midst of our chaos, I will shoot down with my phone over her head so that the ground becomes my background.  Capturing your photos with clean backgrounds will be a game changer for fresh looking images. 

Background is cluttered and distracting

Slightly change angle for clean background

3.     USE LIVE PHOTOS TO YOUR ADVANTAGE

Did you know that a unique feature to iPhones is the live photo? If you have an iPhone, you may have noticed that your photos move as you view them. The iPhone camera actually takes a short video of a few seconds while it’s capturing your photo. This is HUGE when taking photos of kids or pets who quickly move, or multiple people at once who may blink during the photo. While viewing your photo select edit. Next, pick the live mode (it looks like a few concentric circles). This will bring up a reel which allows you to scan and find the best photo within the clip. Once you have the winner, select “make key photo”.  This has been a game changer for me when taking photos of my daughter who will quickly look away. 

Live Photo BEFORE:

Eyes are slightly closed

Live Photo AFTER:

Same photo, just a different selection on the reel

4.     EASILY STRAIGHTEN YOUR LINES

Once your photo has been captured, iPhone has a few handy features that will help you maximize the look of your photos. You can open your favorite photo and click edit. Often times, selecting the crop tool will automatically straighten your photo. If not, you can slide the straighten tool left or right and level the photo manually. At this point, you can also crop your photo if you’d like. Straightening your lines will provide a more polished look to your photos. 

BEFORE

The image is slightly slanted

AFTER

iPhone automatically straightened the image & I manually cropped it

I hope that you find these tips helpful. You may have noticed in the before & afters there were some slight coloring changes in my edits as well. In my next blog post, I’ll share how to edit your cell phone photos to get an Instagram grid your friends will envy. Can you tell which photos on my Instagram are taken with my iPhone instead of my DSLR?

Happy Memory Making! 

-       Jynelle