Complete Mobile Photography course

One of the most used aspects of our smartphones currently is the camera. Telephones have
eclipsed compact cameras and with terminals like the Nokia Lumia 1020 they are
beginning to look at a higher range.

However, that has not led to better photos being taken, almost the opposite. This is because
the vast majority of users of these cameras do not have the basic notions of photography
that owners of more expensive equipment usually have.

But as they say " a good photographer takes a good shot with any camera ", and it is
true, with basic knowledge we can create good photographs without having to use any other
tool than our own mobile phone.

For this purpose, we published the Mobile Photography course divided into sections to
make it easier to read.
Basic tips

As the beginning of this tutorial to familiarize ourselves with the camera of our mobile
phone and be able to take advantage of its full potential, we will review some basic tips
that, although they may seem obvious, can be very useful in our learning process.

1. Clearly define the object you photograph . Photographs that appear chaotic due to the
number of elements that make them up are not uncommon. Remember that, in photography,
less is more , and that the fewer objects in the shot, the better (if you can choose, of
course). If you are going to photograph something in particular, make sure that it is alone,
or clearly differentiated from the surroundings in the frame . Clean up the scene with
the zoom if necessary. The point is not to distract attention from the photographed object.

2. Take care of the focus. A mobile phone is not a reflex camera or a compact camera. The
shooting and focusing speed is slower and therefore there is a greater chance that the
photograph will be blurred. Take your time, rush is not a good advisor. You should
familiarize yourself with the time it takes for your camera to focus and shoot and, above all,
the moment in the process at which you can move even though your phone continues
processing. Each mobile phone takes time depending on the hardware and, although it may
seem less important, the software. Even the sound that simulates the shutter delays the
shot . Remember it. You can disable it if your camera is too slow.

3. The framing. Try not to cut parts of what you photograph. Neither parts of buildings,
nor faces or parts of the body in the portraits. Try to keep the shot clean in that sense until
you have more experience ( we will cover advanced framing modes in future posts ).
After taking the photo you can edit it, there are many programs that do it, and you may miss
having more image when playing with the reframing. The experience will mean that you
will have to retouch your photographs less and less each time.

4. The effects. In the same way that you should take care of the framing for later touch-ups,
it is advisable that the black and white, sepia and other effects be applied after the
photograph has been taken, and not automatically. Take the photo in color and then play
with the coloring effects in your editor. You may regret portraying a scene directly in sepia
and not having a copy of it in color.

And above all, the most important advice we can give you is to practice. The experience is
the best of schools.
Practice, practice and practice.

Common mistakes

Continuing this introductory course to mobile photography, today we will discuss the most
common mistakes that we all tend to make when starting out and how to solve them.

1. Shaky or out of focus images . We must know that the response speed of a mobile
phone camera is not the same as that of a compact camera, especially in environments with
low lighting, so we must hold the camera firmly to prevent the image from blurring during
that time. extra” that our mobile needs to portray.

It is a good idea, in low lighting, to lean on a surface to reduce vibration or separate the
camera from the body at half the distance of our arms, which will be the distance with
the greatest stability . Another good tip is to hold your breath during photography.
Perhaps less known is activating delayed firing. This will avoid the vibration that we
produce in the camera when pressing the capture button, we will then remain still until time
runs out and the camera finishes doing its job.
2. Lighting. Lighting is very important when taking a photograph, not only because of the
composition, but because our mobile camera will react more slowly . Poor lighting on
cameras without a flash will cause the shutter to remain open longer and, therefore, there
will be a greater chance of blurring or the colors in the shot not being the most appropriate
or what we were looking for. We must keep in mind that a distant object that we want to
photograph using the zoom will also receive less light from the flash or none at all .
We will also have to take care of the backlit images, although it is advisable that the light
be projected onto the surface of the object we are photographing. , is a good artistic
resource and we will have to prevent the light source from falling directly on the lens of
our camera. This way we will avoid burned images and/or lighting effects that ruin our
photography.

3. Crooked images. The images must be aligned with respect to some object that appears
in the shot. If it is a photograph of a landscape, the horizon will be the one that must be
completely straight. In urban photographs we can use lines of buildings, streetlights, the
line of the ground, etc. Some cameras have the option of enabling a practical grid that will
help us align our photograph to the object we want. In some camera models we have been
able to observe a digital level to help us make our camera completely straight. We should
not pay attention to this “help” since what is common is that, even if we are completely
straight, the objects around us are not (uneven floors, inclined buildings, etc.).

4. Red eyes. They are nothing more than the result of the projection of light from our
camera's flash on the retina and which returns a red light when the eyes dilate due to the
light and which many cameras correct by launching a few bursts of flash before taking the
actual photograph. If our mobile camera does not have a “Red Eye Reduction” mode, a
very useful tip is to warn the subjects that they should not look directly at the flash
during the capture, in this way we will avoid that annoying red reflection in the eyes. eyes
of our models.

5. Obstruct the objective. Last, but not least, we will hold our cell phone firmly, taking
care that our fingers do not obstruct the lens or we will ensure that our portraits are
partially (or completely) covered by that dark spot that we often cannot identify and that are
no more than our own fingers.
White balance

The light that surrounds us is not always the same color . Depending on the focus that
generates it, it will produce some tones or others in the environment, as we may have
observed in any room when the sunlight enters through the window or it is night and it is
illuminated by the lamp. Or when, when we shoot our mobile camera inside a house
without a flash, we see how orange and reddish colors predominate.

Photographic cameras, including mobile cameras, have different color temperature or

white balance modes so that we can adjust the ambient light and, therefore, the objects
appear in our capture with real tones.

The most common modes that we will find are: automatic , incandescent , natural light ,
cloudy and fluorescent .

But these color temperature adjustments can be used as "effects" for our photographs if we
know how each of the modes works:
 1. Incadescent : Produces an increase in the blue saturation in our shot to
compensate for the intensity of the orange tones.
2. Natural light : Balances the saturation of the primary colors, assuming that the
light source is completely white.
3. Cloudy : Increases saturation in general since its function is to balance
photographs taken in environments with low light or when it is very cold
(predominance of blues).
4. Fluorescent : Increases the saturation of magenta giving our photographs a
pinkish tone, since fluorescent light sources produce light with a high blue
saturation.

Many mobile phones include a few more modes, such as tungsten , which is very similar to
fluorescent, or shadow or gloomy mode, which is similar to cloudy.

In this way, by playing with the modes, we can provoke different sensations with the same
photographs and thus multiply the possibilities of expression of our captures.

Know the color modes of your mobile phone camera to get the most out of it and practice,
practice, practice .
Color modes

One of the features we experiment with the most when purchasing our first compact camera
is color modes , and it is no different with mobile phones. They allow us to create
beautiful effects in our photographs without depending on external programs and that,
for the most novices, is a very attractive feature that, however, has some drawbacks that
we will discuss later. Let's start by describing the most common color modes:

 Black and white. It produces a complete desaturation of the photograph that

produces an old, classic and elegant image effect. It is a color mode that is
especially useful for portraits, especially if we already know how to play with the
frames and take advantage of the lighting of the scene. Knowing how to play with
black and white mode can allow us to give a radical change to the sensations that
photography would transmit without color alterations.
 Sepia. It is a complex mode, sometimes difficult to achieve through an external
program . It gives our image a grayish brown tone that makes them look aged since
it simulates the artificial coloring that was done in black and white images in the
past. Very interesting mode if our mobile phone has the option to add vignetting
(darkening of the edges) to the framing area.
 Negative. It makes it appear that the image we take is actually the negative of it, as
we would see it taken on an analog camera roll. It is a rarely used and certainly
aggressive mode that produces strange images, although we could take advantage
of it with photographs of details in which the object we photograph does not seem
to be clear, or obvious.
 Solarize. Another "strange" mode that inverts the color of our image only in certain
tones depending on their luminosity. It produces an effect similar to that of
accidentally turning on a light during manual development of a photograph. In
general it is a very little used mode .
 Posterize. It reduces the tonal range of a photograph to a few solid colors while
maintaining the resemblance to what the original photograph would be. In this way,
the natural gradients or transitions of the image disappear and areas of uniform
colors appear that produce a sensation of a vectorized image .

They are interesting ways with which we can experiment to convey the sensations we
seek in each shot but we have to be cautious since, in general, our mobile phone will take
the image directly with the filters applied and in some cases it may be that, in the In the
future, we miss having the image with the original colors to be able to carry out other
types of processing.

In the same way, each camera calibrates the modes and takes colors differently (color
saturations), so the application of these filters will produce different and, in some ways,
uncontrollable results depending on the mobile phone we are using. working. For this
reason, we recommend that the processing of the photograph be carried out after taking it.
In this way we can control the result to the millimeter.
Our recommendation is that you photograph without effects or filters and that we treat the
image with editing programs such as Vignette or Photoshop Express for Android and
similar ones for iPhones such as Camera+ and Color My Photos.

Contrast

The contrast of a photograph is the difference, or jump, in intensity of each point in the
photograph with the points that surround it, it is an adjustment of the luminosity of each
point to highlight the darkest areas from the lightest ones . It is a configurable value in
the vast majority of mobile cameras that we can find and that has a very important effect on
the final appearance of the scene that we are capturing.

The lack, or defect, of contrast will produce the sensation of a "washed out"
photograph . The colors, due to their low intensity, will have a smooth transition between
each other, sometimes appearing as if the photograph is out of focus as some color tones
apparently mix with others.

Excess, on the other hand, will make the luminosity in the different color areas so
aggressive that the colors mix and the photograph "burns." This happens because, in the
composition, the different tones of similar colors will not be distinguished at maximum
and minimum brightness and "spots" of uniform colors will appear, both in colors that are
too dark and in colors that are too light.

The average contrast of the cameras is usually quite conservative, so it is recommended to

increase it to get a correct photograph, but we must test to get the correct setting on each
mobile camera.

Saturation

Saturation is the percentage of gray that a color has in its composition. It is the value that
regulates the intensity of a color . It is usually found in the same configuration section as
the contrast and, like this, it is configurable in the vast majority of mobile cameras.

The maximum value will produce almost pure, very aggressive, saturated colors. Some
colors even appear to change given the tonal difference between the original color and its
maximum saturation. We do not recommend playing with the maximum value of this
parameter unless we are looking for a specific effect.
The minimum value or full desaturation converts the color map into a gray scale as we saw
in the previous chapter of this course. Saturation is the main value that turns a color
photograph into a black and white one.

The correct game with these two values can represent the difference between a good and a
bad photograph, although we must not forget that they are easily modified in photo editing
programs if we have made a mistake.

Knowing how these two settings work is very important so that we can adjust the camera of
our mobile phone optimally. Each camera comes with its own initial configuration, within
normal values. A well-adjusted camera will save us from having to retouch the images
later in editing programs.

Composition
One of the most important rules regarding framing and composition of your photographs is
the rule of thirds , although more than a rule it is a trick or tip to give a more professional
appearance to the captures.

The most common practice among novice photographers is to center the photographed
element in the frame, but this can be a mistake since it turns us into producers of ID
photographs. Each photograph can be seen or, rather, each scene can be photographed in
a thousand and one ways , but some are more correct than others.Symmetry is not the
correct option for all our photographs, although some, such as macros, demand this type
of composition.

The rule of thirds is simple. It consists of mentally dividing our frame (although there are
phones that make this easier for us by activating a grid on the screen) with two horizontal
and two vertical lines so that we see our composition as the union of 9 identical blocks.
The four points where the lines intersect, framing points or golden zones, are the
points of interest for our eyes and our brain and, therefore, they are the ones that tell us
where we should place those elements that stand out in the photograph.

If there is more than one element of interest, we will always try to place them at opposite
points of our frame and we will avoid, as far as possible, saturating these points since we
would achieve the opposite effect to what we are looking for with the application of this
rule. and it is not highlighting anything in the photograph.

In the case of landscape photography, the rule of thirds is not applied by points or
golden zones, but with the lines themselves. Although, again, the natural tendency is to
center the horizon or the ground line in the photograph, the rule states that the most
correct thing is to place the horizon on the bottom line , thus reserving a third of the
photograph for the area under the horizon and the upper two-thirds of the sky area.
Although sometimes and if the composition requires it, we can reverse the positions and
dedicate the upper third to the sky and the lower two to the ground .

We must not forget that in certain compositions, such as detailed photographs, macros (as
we mentioned at the beginning) and others, the photograph will require other frames.This
form of composition should not be applied systematically to every moment we capture
, experience will tell us when to select it among other possibilities.

It is a simple rule of thirds that is learned quickly and that will make our images convey
much more and look much more professional.
Share your photos

We will begin this post by saying that every photographer or photography fan who is worth
their salt has an exhibitionist part, and that is that photography is not a private profession or
hobby. If any time is a good time to show your photographs to your acquaintances, why not
take advantage of the infinite possibilities that the Internet offers?

In your pocket, integrated into your mobile phone, you carry a digital camera and with
today's smartphones you have a multitude of applications at your disposal to share the
snapshots you take on the go. Instagram for iOS, Windows Phone or Android, PicPlz
for Android and iOS, Google's Google Plus service or the ubiquitous Flickr . Also
Facebook (although this social network has other purposes and is not exclusive to
photography).

We must not disregard the data provided recently by the "great of photography", Flickr, in
which it stated, statistics in hand, that the iPhone is the camera most used to upload
photographs to its website.

These applications also serve as a cloud backup copy of our images. Services like
Dropbox fulfill this function perfectly.

Browse web photo galleries, comment and review and receive comments and opinions.
These are some of the countless advantages of social networks.

Let's take advantage of the true potential of being online 24 hours a day on our
smartphones and turn our hobby of photography into continuous learning. Photography is
learned by practicing, we all agree, but also by seeing , soaking up the photographs of
others, their way of capturing emotions. Forms of processing that we would never have
considered using for certain photographs, different angles from which to take the shots,
compositions of elements. You learn all this by browsing the galleries of other
photographers.

You also learn a lot from the criticism received. Distinguish those that help us improve
(both good and bad) from superfluous comments.

For this reason, and for many other things, showing your photographs to others,
integrating into communities , is one of the best ways to perfect techniques and assimilate
concepts that would otherwise be impossible to do.