Smartphone secrets: Tips for better smartphone shots

Photography is, at its heart, a toolkit of a few simple techniques executed with almost limitless variation. But in our gear-obsessed culture, it’s easy to believe that another spendy piece of kit will make you into a better photographer.

Yet the truth is the reason we take uninteresting photos usually has far more to do with inadequate technique than with inadequate gear.

Here’s an idea then: take the gear out of the equation as much as possible and focus on technique instead. How? By using the camera you always have with you: your phone!

As a tool for practicing photographic composition, a smartphone has numerous advantages. For one thing, it’s all viewfinder. Better yet, it doesn’t require you to fool around with settings, meaning you can devote 100% of your attention to composition.

And remember that old adage about ‘the best camera being the one you have with you’? It’s wiser than you think.

You can practice any sort of composition using a phone camera, but what it works best with is stuff that takes advantage of the big, flat, graphic presentation its giant screen affords. If your composition isn’t compelling on that screen, chances are it won’t be on your monitor either.

Ready to jump in? Try working on the following four simple phone-photography techniques.

Framing

The human eye is a curious thing. Like a house cat being magically drawn to sit in any cardboard box placed in its environment, the eye craves confinement.

Boxing in the subject of a photo by using other elements of the composition to frame it is intrinsically satisfying, and easy to practice. Indeed, virtually anything that you can shoot ‘through’ represents a possible opportunity to employ a framing technique.

A doorway, window or hole in a wall are all great natural frames to shoot through in order to enhance and add interest to your subject.

By placing other types of elements on the edge of your photograph, heaps of other things can serve as frames as well – tree limbs, leaves, architectural elements or even people are all fair game.

Though the photograph itself naturally presents a bounded view of reality by excluding everything outside of the viewfinder, that effect can be magnified by technique.

When you’re out walking around with your phone and you see an interesting subject, look for a frame. You might be surprised at how many good options there are.

Leading lines

While the eye loves to be confined, it also loves to be led. A strong line at the edge of the frame that draws the eye into the centre of the image is one of the simplest techniques to create a compelling photograph.

The corners of the frame are a natural spot to place these lines, but any border can work with the right subject. I always find that leading lines present especially strongly on a phone screen, reducing the real-world objects in the viewfinder into simple geometric elements.

Think of the way that even a postcard-sized print of Hokusai’s Great Wave painting immediately draws the eye with its sinuous leading lines, or how Da Vinci’s Last Supper instantly focuses the composition with its straight, geometric angles.  

For practice, try going about this two ways: first, by finding a subject and then looking for nearby elements that can be used to lead the eye to it.

And second, by noticing pleasing lines in your environment, and moving the frame around to see if they can be brought into visual symmetry around a point of focus.

Building up the frame

A photograph with only one interesting feature is unlikely to win any prizes. Yet when presented with a compelling subject – the thing that first grabs your eye – it’s easy to fixate on that feature to the exclusion of important supporting details.

These structural ‘helpers in the frame’ are often what turn an okay photograph into a good one, and a good photo into a great one. It’s a key part of making your images ‘graphic’.

The all-viewfinder interface of a phone is great for seeing if the frame is well structured, or if it’s lacking something. A big dead space in a 6-inch screen really shows. This isn’t to say that you want a photo that’s jumbled and busy, but one where there’s a pleasing balance of elements.

The key to practicing this one is to look at your screen and be able to identify when a photograph is ‘missing something’. Do you need to build up the frame a bit more to make the photo compelling?

Do you have a great subject but no visual interest around it? Use your feet to get a better view that puts some structure in the frame to balance it out.

Photographing people

Shooting people is all about the moment, capturing a gesture, pose or expression that’s instantly compelling. Unfortunately, pointing a chunky camera with a hulking 24-70 at people often ruins that moment.

A phone camera, however, is so commonplace that for most of us, its presence barely registers. This means it’s the perfect tool to hone your technique for taking photos of people.

Unless you’re going full stealth mode (and in my experience this seldom yields the best results), photographing other human beings is a social skill at heart. This means intentionally engaging with your subject to make them feel comfortable and at ease (and therefore less likely to pull a face when you’re about to make an image).

Humour is my personal go-to technique for establishing that social rapport, and once I’ve got it, I can snap away to my heart’s content while carrying on a bit of light-hearted patter.

Master that skill with a phone camera, and you’re ready to move onto the bigger task of making someone at ease being photographed with a full-frame monster. ❂