iPhone Photography Tips & Tricks

Photos are good, but great photos are even better!

Adding photos (or any visual elements) to your Facebook posts are a sure fire way to boost your engagement. Photos deliver higher engagement (likes, comments, reactions, shares, post clicks, general interest) because they're immediately more stimulating that just plain old boring words on a screen. 
I will of course, elaborate:

• When you buy a magazine, do you flip through first to read all the words or to look at the pretty pictures?
• When you pick up an autobiography, do you send yourself straight to those juicy photos from your fav celeb's childhood, or do you read 100 pages of words first?
• In this blog post, did you have a squiz at the photos below before you read this and now you're like "yep, point taken".

​Here are my top tips and tricks for taking killer snaps from your iPhone:

ACCESSIBILITY
There are at least three ways of very quickly accessing your camera from your iPhone without actually unlocking your phone. Find these and use them. The quicker you can get photo-taking-ready the more likely you are to capture that hilarious / crazy / unbelievable moment. If you're working with children, animals or weather, you gotta be quick! On iOS 10, all you have to do is swipe left.
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ORIENTATION
Hold your phone sideways and take landscape shots rather than portrait. Most displays are wider than they are tall so it just makes sense (usually). 

LIGHTING
Turn your dang flash off. It's just an LED light and it usually throws a horrible shade of exposure over your snaps. Find yourself some natural lighting, or position yourself when the artificial light works in your favour. Also, keep your dang shadow out of the dang way.

COMPOSITION
Rule. Of. Thirds. It's one of those magic rules that you don't even have to fully understand to use like a boss. Position the focus of your photo or defining lines in one of the outer thirds of your shot, not smack bang in the middle. Here are some examples via www.fatmumslim.com.au

EDITING
Throw your filters, borders, text etc on after you're done shooting. There's nothing worse than making a terrible filter choice before taking the photo and not having access to the original.

Of course, not using these tips and tricks won't necessarily mean you'll take a bad photo, but let me know if you give them a go and they work for you!

Cheers,
Jill Hayes
Coordinator - Quairading CRC