Photography

TRANSCRIPT

Capturing decent photos is literally at your fingertips these days. Cell phone photos are quick and easy to obtain; however, getting great quality photos can be challenging.

I made a short video a little while back, where I shared 6 ways you can take better photos with your cell phone. I’ll leave a link to that below, but

Here are a few of the highlights:

Use the best camera on your phone, likely the rear-facing camera. And make sure it’s clean.

Be sure you are taking the photo in the proper orientation. For most situations, that will be landscape mode…

Use composition. Utilizing the rule of thirds grid is a quick way of making nice-looking photos. Align a person’s eyes with the top line of the grid and make sure you allow some space on all sides of them.

Also, be sure the lighting is the best it can be. If you’re inside, open the blinds or maybe turn on a lamp if it is too dark.

Tapping on your subject on your phone is an easy way to allow your phone to adjust the photo settings for you, both focus and exposure.

Don’t use the cell phone camera flash unless you have no other choice to capture the moment. the harsh light will ruin the photo.

The last improvement with cell phone photos is to resist pinching and zooming before taking a photo. Unless your phone has a multi-camera setup with one lens being more zoomed-in than another, zooming simply digitally enlarges the photo and will cause it to be pixelated and blurry.

Now, it would be great if every photo you took looked amazing right from the camera, but sometimes they need some edits.

For phones, Instagram or VSCO are both great apps for editing photos.

On a computer, Adobe Lightroom is the industry standard for a reason. There are countless resources available on YouTube and other places to teach you how to do almost anything you would like with your photo using this tool.

If you aren’t into taking your own photos, finding a good stock photo is the next best thing. And no, you can’t just google something and take it as is. That’s stealing. If you’re posting it, it needs to be legitimate.

Luckily there are some free and low-cost options.

Pexels.com Pixabay.com Canva.com and Unsplash.com… these sites offer royalty-free images which are legal to use for your own purposes.

If you are looking for pictures with spiritual themes, check out lightstock.com and pay for what you need.

If you find yourself using a lot of stock photos, consider an annual paid plan with lightstock or a company like Envato and their Elements product.

The key with photos, both with ones you capture or stock photos you acquire, is picking the ones that make the statement “a picture is worth a 1000 words” true.

Think about the story you’re trying to tell and capture either as much of the story as you can in those photos or the most engaging component of it.

Having a dynamic, well-composed, well-thought-out photo could be the difference between whether someone stops to read your post or not. Don’t skimp in this area.

I’ll see you in the next one!