Skip to main content
Established 2009

Tips for Better Social Media Smartphone Photos

Social Media Smartphone Photos

Smartphones today make it a lot easier to take beautiful pictures. Here are a few easy to tips to get even better social media smartphone photos.

With today’s technology, beautiful pictures stay with you for the rest of your life: on your laptop, cloud backup, in a frame on your desk or on the wall, as an art piece.

Even as an amateur photographer, you can create quality high definition images with a smartphone.

Smartphones are more portable than professional cameras, and the quality of photographs has steadily been improving with each new version of smartphone that comes out (Pixel 3 is amazing).

But it’s not necessarily the quality of camera that makes an image memorable, most often it?s the subject of your photograph.

In this blog, you learn tips to take better, more memorable photos with your smartphone.

Take your photos with people in them

Social Media Smartphone Photos

  • Incorporate people or some human element, like houses or scenery.
  • Photos with people make them more personal, more memorable and gives them a sense of scale.
  • Use landmark in the background and capture how locals live their lives around them.
  • For best results for portraits, shoot at eye level or elevate the subject. Avoid looking down at someone.

Play with reflections and symmetry

  • Symmetry is important as it brings balance and proportion into photography. When used correctly, it can create aesthetically pleasing images.
  • Reflections make for a beautiful photo: a mirror, a lake or even a window will make your shot unique and memorable.

Social Media Smartphone Photos

Forget The Selfie!

For social media smartphone photos, selfies are really not that cool anymore. For truly memorable photographs, take a professional photographer with you. Of course, if you an ordinary traveler, ask a travel companion to take a picture of you or ask a nice stranger to photograph. Remember, today’s smartphones are easy to use and take amazing photographs.

The quality might not be professional, but still, it?s better than selfie!

Use the Rule of Third, It’s A Must!

This is perhaps the most key rule of photography: divide the picture up into thirds (you will eventually have 9 equal squares) and place your main object on the interception of lines. There is a specific function available in every camera app settings. Use it!

This is how you will focus attention on the ?main object? and improve the composition.

Capture perfect moments

Chances are your smartphone is with you at all times. Keep your camera close when something exciting or memorable is about to happen or is happening. Keep cool, so you don’t become shaky, and then you have your amazing photograph.

This is why your smartphone is such a wonderful and useful tool. You don’t need to prepare, just grab it out of a pocket and SHOOT! You’ll get a very memorable photo with enough tries.

Additional Tip: Use burst mode to capture moments in motion. To use the burst mode, simply hold down the shutter button and it will capture 10 frames per second. Sometimes the frames you don’t use are actually the funniest.

Keep It Clean. Your Lens That Is.

With you grabbing your smartphone all day long, it’s understandably not always clean.

Make sure you wipe and clean your lens before making a shot-of-your-life. Otherwise, that once in a lifetime photo might not be clear because of smudges on the lens.

Focus & Light

  • Select a focal point rather than taking a broad and expansive photo just of the sea for example. Instead find a pattern in the sand, footprints, water over rocks. Those create a focal point; something for the eye to focus on.
  • Use lines in your composition. They should lead to your focal point.
  • Make the foreground the focal point even if the backdrop is your main subject. It adds character and depth to the photo.
  • Your smartphone’s camera has a High Dynamic Range (HDR). Use it. It will result in a perfectly exposed photo.

Additional Tip: Use the focus feature by tapping on the subject you want to be in focus. Your camera will automatically adjust the light in the photo.

Don’t you ever use the flash!

Flash turns cute kids into scary red eyed monsters, and it ruins the quality of the image.

Try to do it yourself by taking such pictures with flash, and see your overall results. Don’t use flash.

Stop the Shaky Hands

Keep your photo sharp using these simple and easy tricks:

  • Hold your smartphone with two hands or use a smartphone tripod.
  • Use a steady element or a flat surface and lean the smartphone against it.
  • Shoot the picture with the volume button instead of the screen tap

For great landscapes get up early or stay up late.

Sunset & sunrise always win. Period. Shoot early in the morning or as the sun is setting to give your image more impact, with longer shadows and softer lights.

Shooting at these times means you will likely be there when no one else is, giving you a unique perspective.

Create silhouettes using the sunset (the flash on most phones cannot carry long distances).

Additional Tip: Try to shoot a sunset with clouds to provide some interesting patterns.

When In Doubt, Edit

Don’t Zoom. Crop It.

When you zoom in on your smartphone the quality of the picture is just not as good.

The camera simply guesses what the image looks like and makes it more precise, based on these assumptions. The picture quality gets really bad, really fast.

Don’t use a fake blur

The depth of field is a feature of cameras that is hard to replicate with smartphones. Wide angle lenses and sensors make it quite difficult to have a blurred background picture. But replicating a blurred background effect through an editing app makes things worse. Don’t use it!

Apps apply the blur effect unevenly: the picture will have an ugly transition from sharp to blurry and it will look completely unnatural. Did I mention, don’t us it!

Instagram

Instagram has become one of the most popular ways to edit and share images.

  • Don’t over share on Instagram, only share your best images.
  • Even though Instagram has filters, putting a filter on a bad photo will not make it great. Take a great photo instead.
  • It’s your right to choose, but the most liked photos have the following filters: Willow, Valencia and Sierra.
  • #nofilter brings in the most likes on Instagram. #truth

Social Media Smartphone Photos Summary

Your smartphone can be a great solution to keep beautiful memories of your travels around the world. Life is about moments and memories. My Best Advice: Use photography to shoot memorable moments.

social media