Using filters is not cheating.Judging from the photos that my friends post online, the camera that gets the most use is the one on the phone. That may be why so many of those posted photos are poorly composed, badly lit and grainy.
But to be fair, it isn’t all the phone camera’s fault. At least that’s the philosophy of Adam Bronkhorst, a professional photographer who has made a sideline of specializing in iPhone photography and has written a book on the subject, titled “SnApp Shots.”
“You need to approach photography as photography; a good photo is a good photo no matter what equipment you take it with,” said Mr. Bronkhorst. “I think one of the main points is you’ve always got that phone camera with you. It used to be that without my watch I felt naked. Now, without my phone, I am totally lost.”
Here are a few tips.
Make it unexpected. The biggest advantage to a mobile phone camera is that you are likely to have it when opportunities pop up. But that doesn’t just mean at a birthday party when it’s time to blow out the candles (you knew that was going to happen and should have a serious camera for that). It’s the unexpected, and that doesn’t always mean a Hallmark Card moment. “Sometimes it’s good to have a bit of awkwardness in a photo,” said Mr. Bronkhorst. “With my two kids, you typically get them to look at the camera and smile at the same time, but sometime I take a picture of them crying, because that is a real moment.”
Frame it. Composition is still king. Get in close, and make sure to showcase the most important element. “If the background is distracting, you can change your angle slightly,” Mr. Bronkhorst said. “If it doesn’t add anything to the photo it shouldn’t be in the photo.” At the same time, he said that photographers shouldn’t be slaves to classic rules of composition, such as the rule of thirds. “You need to learn the rules and break the rules,” he said. “I don’t mind cropping people’s heads off, putting the eyes at the top of the frame, or cropping the head off completely to focus on what they are wearing.”
Lighten up. Lighting is the bugaboo of camera phones. “Look at the lens,” he said. “It’s a fraction of an inch.” Not a lot of area to squeeze light through. Indoors, finding enough light can be a challenge, yet Mr. Bronkhorst advises against using the flash, saying, “It’s rather harsh.” Instead, he improvises, even lighting a shot with a second mobile phone. “I’ve used the phone as a torch to get light coming in from the side,” he said. Even too much light can be a problem. Outdoors, harsh sunlight will wipe out details and leave you with an overexposed, blown-out shot. “I always try to get my subjects in shade,” he said. “I want even light.” And don’t forget that with many phones you can adjust your settings. “Most phones have touch to expose, and touch to focus, so you have to understand you can change the settings of the phone for what you want the point of interest to be.” That means if a face is improperly exposed, touch it on the phone screen before shooting, and it may adjust.
Filter it. You can improve your shots by adding filters, which are visual effects you add afterward. It’s not cheating. “If you look at any photo in any magazine, what you are seeing there is not what came out of the camera; they have all been tweaked slightly,” said Mr. Bronkhorst. He often shoots with Instagram using the Amaro filter, which washes the shot out slightly, making it look more the way he perceives it. “I always bring the saturation down, because we don’t actually see the world the same.” An interesting effect can hide some flaws and make a photo look more artful, but it won’t fix everything. “If a shot isn’t good enough, I don’t know that any filter will save it.”
The clearest advantage of the mobile phone camera is how easy it is to share your shots. “What I love about it, and what I am passionate about, is I can take a photo and share it with everyone in 10 seconds,” Mr. Bronkhorst said. With his pro camera, he said, “That whole process would take, I don’t know, a couple of hours? A couple of weeks?”
Still, there is such a thing as oversharing. “It’s very easy to shoot lots of photos and upload lots of photos,” he said. “The skill of a professional photographer is to edit.”