Photography brings out a lot of skills in a person unknowingly. You might be a beginner and are exploring how to click a good photograph. Meanwhile, you also find amazing photographers with some jaw-dropping pictures so unique spread all over the internet.
Here’s what can help you shape your photography and bring out what is unique in your work:
1. Check your camera’s lens
It is important to clean your phone camera lens. Since phones are used and kept in a different place, the lens can likely get damaged easily and create blur or spots in your picture. Use a soft cloth, same as you would use for cleaning a DSLR’s lens.
If your camera doesn’t seem right for you in any way, you could also use applications like an Open camera that helps in a good quality picture as a personal experience recommendation.
2. Hold your phone the right way
When clicking a picture, whether in portrait mode or landscape mode, notice how you hold your phone. Holding it with one hand and clicking with the same hand’s fingers will make it uncomfortable. Holding with one hand and clicking with the other hand’s fingers doesn’t work well either.
If shooting in portrait mode using both hands told hold from both sides of your phone and rest your fingers on the phone’s sides. This will keep your phone steady and lighter to handle. Use your thumbs to adjust exposure and to press the click button.
Holding your phone in landscape mode would be the same as portrait mode, where you hold the phone with both your hands in a way that the phone rests on your palms, and you can use your thumbs to adjust exposure and click.
3. Keep the basic rules in mind
- Know your settings: Explore your phone camera settings and know what modes are available beforehand so when you find an interesting frame to capture, it will instantly click what to use and how to set up.
- Rule of Thirds: When setting up a good frame, keep the Rule of thirds in mind. Turn on the grid from your phone settings to help you guide where to place interesting objects in the frame.
- Exposure: Check for burnouts or low lights in the frame and adjust your exposure accordingly so later while editing your picture, you don’t face any difficulties.
- Focus: Tap on the object in the frame to get a clear focus of your picture. Use portrait mode to manipulate the depth of field that helps keep your main interest object in focus and keeps the rest blurred to give a more authentic look.
- Depth: Try avoiding a flat look in your photographs and see if you can give it a foreground, mid-ground and background effect. This helps create a certain depth in your frame and doesn’t make it look flat. Creating perspectives is a great way to create depth.
- Lines: Look for leading lines in the frame, whether vertical or horizontal. It can help you point the eye to look in the direction of the subject. This leads to good composition and gives a cinematic feel.
4. Train your eye to look for uniqueness
There are thousands of things you could be surrounded with that gains the potential to be captured for a great picture. But it isn’t always possible to notice it.
You need to have an eye to look for potential framings and compositions and an image of how it would look like. Being creative in this aspect is important.
If imagining a frame doesn’t help, take out your camera and point at random objects to get an idea of how the object would look if kept in a certain framing. Keep practising until your eye sees things differently.
Keep exploring with your camera to know what style you own.
5. Follow the lights
Lights are the greatest friends of a photographer. Do not underestimate natural lighting as they are the beauty of nature. Since photographers love nature, lights are a great source to make your photographs look unique, beautiful and artistic.
Look for sunlight directions and timings. You can use harsh sunlight (make sure of the exposure) to create shadows and contrast, or you could make the sunlight softer by placing a diffusion or by keeping in mind the golden hour. Every photographer loves the golden hour as it gives a beautiful effect to the pictures.
Notice the lighting that street lamps or home lamps create to help you with night photography. At night there is so much light that an entire city is lit up beautifully. Use your creativity to capture it using different modes in your camera.
Explore night mode in your phone’s camera to know if it works for you.
6. Editing your picture
After you have clicked your picture, you certainly would like to give it a more cinematic look by either doing some colour correction or adding effects that you feel would make the picture more professional.
You can explore by editing applications like Snapseed by Google or Adobe Lightroom. There are many other applications like PicsArt. It works for different photographers in different ways.
Remember to give your photograph a cinematic effect, meaning creating shadows and highlights and creating depth and a meaningful look.
7. Find your style – you are unique – The most important thing to keep in mind
Going by the rules and bringing out a correct and catchy framing is important. But also knowingly breaking the rules of photography also works or many as it brings out emotion. As long as photographers are exploring, it’s great, and mistakes can sometimes turn out to bring out your uniqueness.
Being yourself is extremely important, and with years of practice, we are all going to learn which rules will work for us and which brings out our feelings. Keeping the basic rules in mind, keep exploring and see how many mistakes can be made.
It is alright to try our bad framing for our learning purposes as it only helps in understanding the mistakes that shouldn’t be made. It is all a part of the learning process that requires research, hard work and practice.
Know all and apply your style in your photography, and they will be great pictures.
