Essential Tips for Creative Smartphone Photography

Photography Tips  •  Smartphone Photography

Smartphone photography is becoming more and more popular as the cameras in phones get better and better. Combine this with the widespread use of apps like Instagram, and you have a genre of photography that is creating its own place in the world of professional and amateur photography alike. In the video clip below, Kate Hailey explains what smartphone photography means to her and shares some useful tips to help you improve your own craft:

The Art Behind The Images

After going through a slideshow of some of Kate’s favorite shots, she delves into what everyone is wondering. How is she capturing those shots? What apps is she using? Here’s an overview:

• Many of the same rules cross over from traditional photography into smartphone photography, namely composition.
• Look for interesting ways to frame your subject.
• Be on the lookout for leading lines and interesting textures.
• Move around the subject and try out different perspectives.

Try different perspectives to create interesting images.

What Do I Need?

Kate uses an iPhone for her mobile photography, but she stresses that Android devices are perfectly capable, and great photographs can be made using either of the devices. Here are a few of her favorite apps:

• Snapseed is her go-to editing app. It’s free, powerful, and a must have.
• Hipstamatic has many different filters to easily change the look of your images.
• VSCOCam another free app that has a lot of in-app upgrades to bring your images to the next level.
• PicFX offers a ton of fun filters and textures.
• Mextures makes adding creative texture to images easy and has about 80 different textures to chose from.

Snapseed is a useful app for converting images to black and white.

The most important rule, Kate says, is to have fun with your smartphone photography. Try new things and and don’t take yourself so seriously that it begins to drain the fun out of mobile photography.