5 Smartphone Photo Tips for the Holidays

If you plan to capture a few photos during the holidays, consider these smartphone photo tips for taking great photos with your iPhone, Android, or any mobile device.

These days, we take more photos than ever. And most are captured by smartphones! For example, on Instagram, more than 100 million photos and videos are uploaded EVERY DAY.

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Light up your Room

If you are shooting indoors and can plan ahead, give your smartphone a helping hand and turn on the lights. Turn on lamps in front of your subject and ceiling lights. And as long as any light source which is located behind your subjects is a subtle one, your camera will still work better with the added illumination. Also, the daytime brings an extra bonus! Pull back window curtains to let in the sunshine (at your back, not behind your subject)!

smartphone photo tips

Back-lighting Beware

To avoid capturing silhouettes, you can make sure that your light source is behind you or off to the side. As mentioned above, having window curtains is great; however, if the windows are behind your subject, it’s a good idea to close the curtains or blinds if the lighting is strong.

smartphone photo tips

Turn off the Flash

Typically a flash from a smartphone will create harsh lighting. Why? Well, mainly because they don’t actually flash. They use LED bulbs, which are great. They’re bright, power-efficient, and very small. They’re just not great for posing as a camera flash. The difference between this and an SLR camera flash is that the latter uses a hermetically sealed tube full of xenon to create illumination.

To take a better low-light photo without using the harsh smartphone flash, you can increase the ISO in your phone’s camera options. Most smartphones have this option in the settings.

Even better, you can use the camera’s High Dynamic Range (HDR) mode. Typically when we talk about HDR mode, we are referring to combining several photos taken at different exposures for an image with a superior tonal range (and blah-blah-blah).

How this works on a smartphone is that HDR mode simulates this effect but without taking multiple photos. It returns great results! Give it a try.

smartphone photo tips

Add a Clip-on, Wide-angle Lens to your Smartphone

We could talk about focal lengths, fixed focal lengths and all of that technical stuff. But we won’t.

To increase your creative options during the holidays and beyond, you can attach another lens onto the front of your smartphone. There are wide-angle and macro lens options. Those who follow my personal page may remember some shots I posted with a clip-on smartphone lens. A little dorky? Yep. But isn’t that what makes photography fun?

A clip-on lens is a great stocking-stuffer idea and Amazon has several from which to choose.

smartphone photo tips

Check Your Perspective

For photos of children and pets, move-in lower and down on the ground. Get to their level.

Also, for better candid photos, shoot from the hip! Hold your phone about waist-high and tap, tap, tap! Get sneaky, be covert. You’ll get a lot of bad shots, but you’ll get a few great ones too!

How to Compose a Photo