I have only been seriously pursuing mobile photography for a year, but I still sometimes think about all the things I wish I had known at the very beginning. Don’t get me wrong; there were definitely lessons that I needed to learn on my own (and there still are), but had I known any better I would have looked for tips that would have helped me out a bit. I thought about what kind of knowledge I could have used and came up with a list of tips that I hope can help you get started with mobile photography, or enhance your skills if you are already snapping photos with your phone. For those of you who are already seasoned mobile photographers, I hope these tips can open up a discussion about what a beginner should focus on. Here we go-

Tip #1- Lighting

Pay attention to lighting. You have a few lighting sources at your disposal, and each one needs to be considered differently. There’s artificial light as well as daylight, which can be broken down into further subgroups: sunrise, midday, and sunset. Look at where the light is coming from and where it is going. Also, pay attention to the time of day, especially with natural light photography (when you use the sun exclusively). Midday creates harsher contrast, sunset is more mellow.

Tip #2- Exposure

Exposure is EVERYTHING. It can be tricky though; I had trouble with exposure for a while before I figured out how to properly expose an image. The main question you need to ask yourself when setting up a shot is “what is important in this image?”. You should be able to identify what you want to show off in the photo, so take the time to make sure that part is given the center stage. Keep in mind that since you are likely shooting in JPEG format, which is totally fine for now, you may not be able to expose all the parts of your image properly, such as with landscape photography. Oftentimes you won’t have any serious issues, but certain conditions make this scenario difficult. I found that I could expose the image properly for the focus area and leave the rest a little “off” by conventional terms (the sky is over-exposed, the shadows are too dark…) and I still liked the photo. Use your best judgement, but also make sure you and/or your viewers can see you subject!

Tip #3- Focus

Focus is actually pretty easy to forget about when taking pictures with a smartphone because auto-focus seems like it does all the work for you. Get the focus wrong though and your image is going to look terrible. So, just make sure you are using the tap to focus feature in your camera app. This sets the focus either for that one photo or for a bunch of the same photo depending on how you set it up. Check your phone to see if you can lock the exposure. Then you won’t have to set the exposure for each individual image. Typically you should focus on your subject, but if you don’t have a specific subject, or it is too large, then pick a good spot to focus on that makes sense.

As a side note, setting the focus usually sets the exposure as well. Sometimes this works out, but keep an eye on it. You can always adjust the exposure after setting your focus point, so take care of that if your exposure is thrown off.

Tip #4- Take lots of photos!

On order to get that perfect shot, you need to take lots and lots of photos. Don’t take just one; you need to have some options. To do this, just keep your phone out as much as possible. It should be fairly easy to just see something cool, open your camera app, and take the shot. Putting the phone away in your bag or pocket just complicates things. Keep your phone out and you’ll not only have more time to get lots of photos, you’ll also have more time to photograph something you wouldn’t have otherwise and you have no excuse for not getting multiple vantage points. You may not want to take multiple photos at a time for fear of running out of storage. Solution: download Google Photos to your phone or back them up manually to a hard drive at a computer. Then delete the photos on your phone.

It is always a good idea to have more backups than you need. Even if you just take photos for the memories, back them up. I think for most people a cloud backup and a physical backup are sufficient. Just remember to actually back up the photos!

Tip #5- Use your resources

There are a few products that you can use to enhance your phone’s abilities. You can absolutely take great photos without any of these things, but they can be helpful:

An external battery. To charge your phone up when it gets low on juice. A small battery that can recharge your phone maybe 2 or 3 times is fine.

A tripod to steady your photos and reduce blur/take awesome seflie shots of you standing in front of that really cool-and-hard-to-get-to place!

A bluetooth shutter release. This goes great with the tripod so that you don’t need to run back and forth and mess with the self-timer.

A good cleaning cloth to wipe off your camera’s lens. It gets real dirty in your bag or pocket, not to mention when you accidentally smudge it when you’re feeling around for the fingerprint sensor *cough-Samsung-cough*.

For now, don’t worry too much about getting those attachable lenses: you should get the mechanics of the phone down first, then introduce the fun stuff.

Tip #6- Be intentional

Your photos need to be intentional. If you can, know why you want that photo before you take it. If you don’t know right then though, still take the photo. Just figure it out later before you edit it; otherwise you could mess up the photo during the editing process by not knowing why you took it.

Tip #7- Tell a story

Use your photos to tell stories. The last thing you want is to have bland, uninteresting photos. By telling a story, your photo is going to resonate with you and your audience. Keep in mind that smartphones, as good as they are, will not have the same image quality of a professional camera; that’s just not the point. Your phone is such a powerful tool because it is with you all the time and it can go places big cameras cannot. What you can do though is focus on the story behind the photo, therefore making up for the lower megapixel count.

I hope that these tips can help you, whether in small or large ways. If you have anything to add, please comment! I would love to hear other voices added to this narrative. Now go out there and take amazing photos!

*None of these views are in any way sponsored by the companies mentioned in this article. All views are my own.*