How to take beautiful pictures on iPhone for Instagram | Articles | Photo, video, optics

Post­ing pho­tos on Insta­gram but get­ting 5 likes from your clos­est friends? We need to change some­thing, because there are mil­lions of peo­ple on the net­work, and each of them can see exact­ly your pho­to, it is she who can get into the tops and bring hun­dreds of new sub­scribers. But how do you take beau­ti­ful pho­tos? They say the eas­i­est way is on the iPhone. We talk about how to fill your account with artis­tic pho­tos using this smart­phone.

Pho­to: pixabay.com

What and when to shoot

Sunrises, sunsets and nature

The iPhone cam­eras have a sig­nif­i­cant advan­tage over the rest — with their help, you get such spec­tac­u­lar shots with nature, espe­cial­ly sun­ris­es and sun­sets, that likes pour like from a cor­nu­copia. The iPhone is great at cap­tur­ing con­trasts, hues, and dynam­ic range. This is espe­cial­ly notice­able if you turn on the smart HDR func­tion in the cam­era set­tings.

More styles

Explore dif­fer­ent shoot­ing styles. You should not be lim­it­ed, heed­ing the pre­vi­ous advice, to nature or monot­o­nous self­ies, although it is not nec­es­sary to com­plete­ly exclude them. The iPhone is great for street pho­tog­ra­phy. For exam­ple, these smart­phones man­age to suc­cess­ful­ly catch the move­ment of peo­ple and cars.

The iPhone suc­cess­ful­ly shoots inte­ri­ors, objects, por­traits and, of course, food. So in terms of gen­res, you have a huge choice.

“Golden Watch”

For mobile pho­tog­ra­phy, in many ways, the same rules that reign in the world of pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phy apply. Name­ly — the “gold­en hours” for film­ing: right before dawn and after sun­set. At this time, the shad­ows are the soft­est, the light­ing plays with incred­i­ble col­ors and there is almost no rea­son to be afraid of over­ex­posed frames. But dur­ing the day in bright light or in cloudy weath­er, you always have to pay atten­tion to how the sky looks. If it’s too light, try slid­ing your fin­ger across the screen to adjust the frame’s bright­ness.

In the “gold­en hours” the city or nature is espe­cial­ly good. Pho­to: @austinmann / instagram.com

Frame work

classical composition

If it’s not yet pos­si­ble to build a frame by eye, in the cam­era set­tings you can select a grid that will help you more eas­i­ly iden­ti­fy 9 sec­tions of the pho­to. By plac­ing the main sub­ject on the frame in one of the squares and lin­ing up ver­ti­cal and hor­i­zon­tal lines on the grid, you will very eas­i­ly get a good shot. Of course, some­times you can afford to devi­ate from the rules and arrange objects as you like, but first it is bet­ter to learn the basics of com­po­si­tion.

Bottom up, top down

Front shots are orig­i­nal, but for the most part they are very monot­o­nous. There­fore, dilute the famil­iar and look at the world from unex­pect­ed angles. For exam­ple, shoot a build­ing not from your height, but from ground lev­el. Or take a pic­ture of an indoor flower from afar, and focus on its shad­ow. Get cre­ative, move around the sub­ject and try dif­fer­ent options. One will def­i­nite­ly be suc­cess­ful.

The last floors of sky­scrap­ers, the roofs are good points for shoot­ing. Pho­to: @jon.ciang / instagram.com

Behind the viewer’s eye

Even when the pho­to is small, on a smart­phone screen, you still need to imag­ine how sub­scribers will look at the pic­ture: scrolling through the tape, they will catch on to a bright spot or one ele­ment that will lead their eyes fur­ther down the frame. So it is worth build­ing it so that the plot is hid­den in it. After all, every work of art should tell a sto­ry.

Focus travel

You can also focus on some­thing oth­er than the main sub­ject of the pho­to. If you’re film­ing a pitch­er, you don’t have to make sure it’s the cen­ter point. On the con­trary, try to focus on things around: show the sub­ject through its envi­ron­ment. Here we again rely on the tech­niques of pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phy, but what can you do.

Focus­ing on drops gave a spec­tac­u­lar blur of objects in the back­ground. Author’s pho­to

Lighting

External lights

If you are shoot­ing a the­mat­ic blog, for exam­ple, about books or decor ele­ments, you will often need to take pho­tos of objects. The light will not always be on your side, but there is a sim­ple solu­tion. Either pur­chase an exter­nal ring lamp with a dif­fuser, or use cold light from a con­ven­tion­al lamp. To avoid glare, you can put a sheet of paper between the light source and the sub­ject — it will cre­ate soft shad­ows.

Flash — evil or not

If the exter­nal flash on dig­i­tal cam­eras is con­fig­urable, then the mobile phone’s LED bulb does not have such a priv­i­lege. There­fore, when shoot­ing, it is bet­ter to rely on nat­ur­al light. The viewfind­er is a smart­phone screen, and the iPhone has excel­lent Reti­na dis­plays, so look straight ahead in real time and catch the most spec­tac­u­lar fall of light.

Mod­ern iPhone cam­eras have a night mode in which a dark frame is arti­fi­cial­ly bright­ened, but it is “grainy”, which reduces the qual­i­ty of the pho­to.

Nat­ur­al light is much rich­er and rich­er than what you can get from a flash. Author’s pho­to

Secrets of technology

Better get closer

If you’re shoot­ing at a dis­tance and expect to zoom in on the image, it’s best to get clos­er. No mat­ter how cool the iPhone cam­era is, dig­i­tal zoom will great­ly ruin the detail of the frame. But shoot­ing at a short dis­tance from the sub­ject, you will keep all the nat­ur­al pix­els and get high res­o­lu­tion. Espe­cial­ly if the light­ing is bright enough. Feel free to use dif­fer­ent shoot­ing modes. Although the iPhone does not have a macro mode, it does take close-up objects so well.

Why you need the Live Photo option

If you shoot in Live Pho­to mode, the phone can cap­ture not just a frame, but a video that is sev­er­al sec­onds long. On Insta­gram, this is almost use­less, but the func­tion itself is also great for long expo­sure pho­tos.

In addi­tion, you get not one, but sev­er­al frames, and you can even choose the one that worked best from the video. To do this, go to the pho­to edit­ing mode, click on the Live Pho­to icon and move the slid­er to the desired frame. Then select it as the main one.

A frame processed in the Snapseed app. Author’s pho­to

Treatment

Pro­fes­sion­al pho­tog­ra­phers tend not to resort to the help of pho­to edi­tors, but for Insta­gram this option is quite good. There are sev­er­al pop­u­lar apps such as VSCO and Snapseed. They help to process the fin­ished frame and adjust the bright­ness, con­trast, shades, and so on. Almost like pho­to­shop, only much eas­i­er. And these appli­ca­tions have a large library of fil­ters. All results can be can­celed or saved as a sep­a­rate file.

Here are some tips we have pre­pared for those who want to get beau­ti­ful pho­tos for Insta­gram. And this is much eas­i­er to do than it seems. After all, most top accounts are run by peo­ple like you and me. Try and fail, see what works best, and you’re sure to find your style.