The Town: 7 tips to take better photos with your cell phone – 09/02/2023 – Equilíbrio

A cell phone allows travelers to always have a camera on hand. Here are some tips on when and what to shoot, as well as how to better frame what’s in front of you.

Imagine your photos as an album

Try to capture a wide variety of images. While it’s important to focus on classic landscape and portrait shots, also aim to take pictures with attractive colors and shapes.

find your horizon

Steven Spielberg ended his autobiographical film, “The Fabelmans”, with a meeting with legendary director John Ford. Ford’s main advice? Place the horizon at the top or bottom of the image, because the middle is “flat”.

This idea divides the frame into thirds, horizontally and vertically. On most phones, you can set a 3×3 grid for the screen in the camera settings.

Show image layers

Good landscape photos draw attention to the entire frame, so you need to look for points of interest in the foreground, middle ground, and distance.

Find a vantage point that lets you see the different layers of a scene.

For portraits, find the right backdrop

Look for a clean background – a natural canvas with relatively solid colors or shapes, such as a wall, open sky or foliage.

work the frame

It’s good to have a variety of portraits: headshots, half-lengths and full-lengths, as well as horizontal and vertical. Keeping these “frames” in mind helps you choose the best click.

Edit your photos more than once

Take your time and review all the pictures you’ve taken, scrolling through the pictures at least twice.

Take it easy on post-production

Cell phone cameras, like ordinary cameras, can’t always read light correctly. It is often necessary to adjust the exposure, shadows or color temperature of a photograph.

In general, spend as little time as possible working on a photo, and focus on balancing the tone and lighting of the images so they appear cohesive.

Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves