11 Simple Tips to Capture Professional Photos With Your Phone

Phone cameras have gotten increasingly better over the last decade but within the last couple years they have gotten to professional levels, which I've made multiple videos about on this channel. In this video I cover over ten simple tips that will take your photos to professional levels and the best part is you can go at your own pace. I've structured the lessons in this video to take it as serious or as casual as you'd like.

Learning photography doesn't have to be complicated. Many may think a phone isn't powerful enough or it's too limited. The reality is that the phones weakness of versatility is actually it's greatest strength. When you are limited with choices it means you have to get creative. This is the definition of creativity and where phone photography flourishes. If you start capturing great images on your phone, you'll absolutely capture amazing images on anything else.

Throughout this video I'll cover simple settings you can do on your phone to achieve better images, thinking with more intention when you're out to create images with photography, and how to craft better stories using composition and lighting no matter what camera you're shooting with.

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0:00 Intro
0:55 Photography With Intention
1:52 Use a Pro Camera App
3:08 Grid Lines
4:35 Photograph in raw
5:20 Clean Your Lenses
6:20 Let Shadows be Shadows
7:25 Composition Challenges
12:08 Only Use Native Lenses
12:45 Long Exposures on Phone
14:40 Lighting!
16:55 Editing

[dorkis]

Best concept for a beginner video that I've ever seen. Genius bringing in someone who genuinely doesn't know to allow them to ask questions while you act as a mentor to both them and your audience

[SwxyzCOD]

Your content is criminally underrated ❤

[lanceschill]

Thanks, Sophie! Learning with you was a lot of fun 😊
Great post, Alex

[CT-wqje]

Useful stuff. And thanks to Sophie for sure. Being the guinea pig is always tricky.

[jamesfarabaugh]

Watching you help her find different compositions at the parliament really drove home my biggest struggle. I don’t have much artistic vision and tend to resort to snapshot style shooting.

[Chromatomic]

Sophia did great! Some of these tips are also good to remind ourselves of too. It's easy to get comfortable with the instagram composition of a place and neglect exploring different or more creative angles and compositions. For street photography especially, I always imagine it as a diorama that you can adjust and shift around to move elements into different spaces and build a space for something to happen. Something to pay attention to as well is the angle of the phone and how that affects your vertical lines. It's much easier to accidentally create more exaggerated effects either intentionally or unintentionally just because the phone is a lot more agile than how you might use a larger camera. 

Also this is a really great primer for people moving into more serious photography, a lot of people are comfortable with taking photos on their phone but think you need to have an expensive camera to take better images and a lot of the basics can be improved upon just using your phone.

[BCE-]

Hi Alex and Sophia. :) Hope all's well. Started watching this and it seems great. But since it's 3:20 AM I'm heading off to bed and will finish watching it a little later. Thanks for sharing. 👍

[landseaairphotography]

You look a bit warmer than last week. Welcome back Sofia. All points go for any type of camera.

[dougorlando]

Thank you Sophia... Alex, great content!

[christopherscragg]

Will this app become to android, thank you.

[peterleibundgut]

Thank you, Sofia. Thank you Alex.
Greetings from the foothills of Mt. Fuji

[peteg]

What a lovely video and great to send to some of my friends who wanna take better pics with their phone as they don't want to go all in and buy a dedicated camera.

[matthewtan]

Btw the lightroom app has manual camera controls too

[woflgangdurst]

Great video. Well explained. The two of you together is wonderful.
Thanks Wolfgang

[randyschwager]

Great suggestions for any non photographers! You made it fun to watch for anyone! It was great to see Sofia again! I will be checking out the long exposure app! Thanks for taking me along!

[shutterhobbyist_]

Yah Very interesting videos.
I'm a mobile Photography hobbyist and I am searching for videos like this. I learn a lot.

[manosg]

Great video! Thank you Sofia! Hope to see you soon in a new photography adventure 👏👏👏

[lindaspenard]

Good morning Alex 🌈Good job Sophie. Alex has some competition now!

[WillNewcomb]

The tutorial with the two of you was really helpful!

[davidligon]

What a fun and useful video! I’m guessing Sophia takes photos with her phone when she travels with you. It would be fun to feature one of her “amateur” shots on your videos to encourage beginners. My brother’s wife and my wife take pictures on their phones when we travel for a shoot and they often come back with interesting perspectives and subjects we did not capture - even if not executed perfectly. I’m guessing it is similar with Sophia.