How to take pictures with your phone: 9 top ideas | Articles | Photo, video, optics, Phones

Spring is in the yard! Time for cre­ativ­i­ty and exper­i­men­ta­tion. Dur­ing this peri­od, I want to take as many non-stan­dard pic­tures as pos­si­ble and replen­ish my social net­works with them. But how to take beau­ti­ful cre­ative pho­tos on your phone? We col­lect­ed cool ideas for a pho­to shoot in this guide.

Tak­ing amaz­ing pho­tos is easy. And detailed ideas are in this mate­r­i­al. Pho­to: www.pxhere.com

Cot­ton clouds
Option 1
Option 2
Draw a rain­bow
Pho­to with a mir­ror
Option 1
Option 2
Por­trait with Polaroid effect
How to shoot under­wa­ter
How to take a cre­ative glit­ter pho­to
Idea for a pho­to with a sten­cil

Cotton clouds

A cheap and easy way to get very unusu­al pho­tos tak­en with a smart­phone.

Option 1

Weath­er — Sun­ny, clear or with a small amount of cumu­lus clouds.

You will need:

• a bunch of balls;
• smart­phone;
• a large cloud of cot­ton. Bet­ter than 70 by 40 cm. It can be wrin­kled along the edges so that the cloud turns out to be nat­ur­al, cumu­lus;
• tri­pod.

How to take an orig­i­nal pho­to on a smart­phone?

• The mod­el must be placed on a hill.
• The tri­pod is low­ered as low as pos­si­ble — you need to cap­ture the frame from below.
• A cot­ton cloud is placed between the mod­el and the tri­pod.
• The mod­el, balls, a piece of cloud, the sky should fall into the frame.

Who refus­es to jump on the clouds? Illus­tra­tion: YouTube chan­nel Kan­bokeh

How to make a frame more inter­est­ing:

• balls can be tak­en with a the­mat­ic inscrip­tion;
• stretch out a hand with balls — as if the mod­el flies with them;
• use the sec­ond mod­el (M2). Then the first (M1) can be placed even high­er (for exam­ple, on a stool). She will fly away on the bal­loons, and M2 will pull her by the oth­er hand, try­ing to hold her;
• if there is not enough light, you can high­light the desired area using a reflec­tor.

Option 2

Weath­er — cloudy, over­cast, before the rain, a lot of clouds, clouds.

You will need:

• out­door loca­tion;
• smart­phone;
• a bot­tle of water — 1 liter. At the bot­tom of the bot­tle, as close as pos­si­ble to the bot­tom, thin holes must be made around the entire cir­cum­fer­ence so that water flows out in thin streams;
• tri­pod;
• cot­ton wool cloud — you can take it from the pre­vi­ous guide or a small­er one;
• stick, fish­ing rod — some­thing to hold a cloud with a bot­tle;
• rain­coat.

A hole must be made in the cen­ter of the cloud ver­ti­cal­ly. Its diam­e­ter should be equal to the diam­e­ter of the bot­tle. It needs to be fixed in the cloud. You can strength­en the struc­ture like this:

• make a frame of thick wire;
• fix the bot­tle in the cen­ter of the frame (tie);
• cov­er the entire frame from the out­side with cot­ton wool (can be glued with it);
• tie the bot­tle to a long stick. The main thing is that the bot­tle should not be vis­i­ble from below the cloud.

The mod­el must be placed in the cen­ter of the loca­tion, put on a rain­coat.
The cloud on a stick can be placed in dif­fer­ent ways: above the mod­el, next to it, behind it.
The guide sug­gests an option where the cloud is a lit­tle clos­er to the cam­era than the mod­el.

The cloud is an unusu­al prop with which you can take many inter­est­ing pic­tures. Illus­tra­tion: YouTube chan­nel Kan­bokeh

Draw a rainbow

Weath­er cloudy or after rain.

You will need:

• out­door loca­tion (beau­ti­ful nature, lush grass, many flow­ers);
• smart­phone;
• a piece of thin trans­par­ent plas­tic 20 by 30 cm;
• mark­ers or gouache;
• tri­pod;
• paint buck­et;
• paint brush.

The first step is to draw a rain­bow on a piece of trans­par­ent plas­tic. Not all mark­ers draw well on a plas­tic sur­face. There­fore, you can use dense thick paint. For exam­ple, gouache.

The mod­el must be placed with its back to the tri­pod on which the smart­phone is installed.

At a dis­tance of 5–10 cm from the phone, you need to place a drawn rain­bow. It can be attached to a stick or sim­ply held by hand. The exact dis­tance depends on the size of the rain­bow.

It is impor­tant that the bot­tom col­or in the rain­bow match­es the cir­cle that the mod­el can draw by hand. The task is to catch the frame when the mod­el brings her hand to the edge of the rain­bow. To make it look like she drew a rain­bow.

The size of the rain­bow depends only on your desires. It can be small, or it can take up almost the entire frame. Illus­tra­tion: YouTube chan­nel Kan­bokeh

Photo with a mirror

A mir­ror is a prop that can trans­form any pho­to shoot. With it, you can take a lot of cool and unusu­al shots. Now we will show some ideas for a pho­to shoot on the street in the spring.

Option 1

Weath­er — clear.

You will need:

• water;
• smart­phone;
• a mir­ror (rec­tan­gu­lar, with­out a frame. It is bet­ter to take at least 30x40 cm in size);
• paper boat;
• table.

The table should be placed at a dis­tance of 3–5 meters from the reser­voir. A mir­ror is placed on top of the table. It is a con­tin­u­a­tion of the water sur­face. There­fore, it must com­plete­ly hide the edge of the table. Clos­er to the edge of the mir­ror put a paper boat.

The mod­el stands between the pond and the table. The task is to cre­ate the illu­sion that she is stand­ing in a paper boat. To do this, we low­er the smart­phone ver­ti­cal­ly as close as pos­si­ble to the sur­face of the mir­ror so that its sur­face merges with the sur­face of the water.

A very unusu­al pho­to idea with a mir­ror. Illus­tra­tion: YouTube chan­nel Kan­bokeh

Option 2

Weath­er — any. The time is evening, before sun­set to catch the rays of the set­ting sun.

You will need:

• a field or any loca­tion in nature where there is grass;
• smart­phone;
• a mir­ror (round with a radius of 15–20 cm or oval);
• tri­pod.

This is a mod­ern and inter­est­ing pho­to idea.

You need a low tri­pod to place your smart­phone at a height of about 50 cm from the ground. At the same time, the smart­phone itself must be fixed not ver­ti­cal­ly, but at an angle of 45 degrees, so that it is tilt­ed to the ground. Diag­o­nal­ly (men­tal­ly draw it from a smart­phone) you need to put a mir­ror. It is bet­ter not just to the ground, but to a small hill so that it does not com­plete­ly drown in the grass.

Mod­els need to stand behind the mir­ror, and the pho­tog­ra­ph­er needs to catch their reflec­tion in the frame.

A mys­te­ri­ous and unusu­al pho­to of a cou­ple. Illus­tra­tion: YouTube chan­nel Kan­bokeh

How to diver­si­fy a pho­to?

Mod­els can be moved clos­er to the mir­ror and asked to join hands. They will be almost above the mir­ror. In this case, the smart­phone needs to be raised by anoth­er 10–20 cm (this depends on the ini­tial posi­tion, the size of the mir­ror, the height of the mod­els).

Shoot­ing a reflec­tion always looks unusu­al and beau­ti­ful. Illus­tra­tion: YouTube chan­nel Kan­bokeh

Portrait with Polaroid effect

This styl­ish effect will help make a cre­ative spring pho­to.

Weath­er — warm, sun­ny (May is per­fect).

You will need:

• smart­phone;
• card­board frame (like the frame in Polaroid pho­tos)$
• tri­pod.

The smart­phone is mount­ed on a tri­pod and placed at a dis­tance of 40–50 cm from the ground. The task is to make the frame a lit­tle from below. Mod­els should be tak­en 7–10 meters away from the pho­tog­ra­ph­er. The pre­pared frame should be placed at a dis­tance of 10–15 cm from the smart­phone. You can sim­ply hold it with your hand (you can even cap­ture a brush in the frame), install it on any stand, or even insert it into a real Polaroid.

It turns out unusu­al and beau­ti­ful pho­tos tak­en on a smart­phone.

On the left is the shoot­ing process, on the right is the result. Illus­tra­tion: YouTube chan­nel Kan­bokeh

Addi­tion­al ideas

• You can, for exam­ple, take sev­er­al pho­tos in such frames from dif­fer­ent places — if you are trav­el­ing.
• Or take a series of shots in one place in dif­fer­ent poses/images or at dif­fer­ent times of the day. Then you can col­lect all the pho­tos into a beau­ti­ful col­lage.

How to shoot underwater

The orig­i­nal idea for a pho­to shoot is shoot­ing under­wa­ter (for exam­ple, in the sea, pool).

You can take beau­ti­ful pho­tos in the water not only with the help of a pro­fes­sion­al cam­era and a spe­cial water­proof case. If none of this is avail­able, you can:

• just take a trans­par­ent con­tain­er (for exam­ple, a plas­tic buck­et, a glass, a sealed bag);
• put a smart­phone in it;
• low­er the buck­et into the water so that the liq­uid does not get inside.

This tech­nique will help to take such pho­tos. Pho­to: leisurepoolsusa.com

Life hacks:

• it is bet­ter to take a con­tain­er made of trans­par­ent plas­tic, with­out streaks and scratch­es — so that the pic­ture is clear­er;
• it’s a good idea to take a cube-shaped con­tain­er — the smart­phone will fit bet­ter on the edge and the pho­to qual­i­ty will be bet­ter;
• The phone can be attached to the inside with adhe­sive tape so that it stays in one place.

How to take a creative glitter photo

Anoth­er unusu­al idea for a cool pho­to shoot.

Weath­er — warm, sun­ny

You will need:

• smart­phone;
• tri­pod;
• flat con­tain­er (for exam­ple, you can take a flat trans­par­ent water bot­tle);
• water;
• glit­ter for liq­uid of any warm, bright col­or.

It’s sim­ple, you need:

• pour the dye into the water, mix it well;
• put the mod­el at a dis­tance of 2–3 meters from the pho­tog­ra­ph­er;
• make a frame through the water with sparkles.

You need to take a pic­ture of the mod­el as soon as pos­si­ble, as the sparkles quick­ly set­tle. Or you can con­stant­ly stir them.

On the left is an exam­ple of how to pho­to­graph through tint­ed water. On the right is an exam­ple of why it needs to be con­stant­ly stirred. The glit­ter falls off quick­ly. Illus­tra­tion: YouTube chan­nel Kan­bokeh

Idea for a photo with a stencil

Weath­er — any.

You will need:

• sten­cil (one or more);
• smart­phone.

The sten­cil is best made from thick white card­board. It will not break from the wind, it is more con­ve­nient to hold it in your hand. It is bet­ter to choose a draw­ing as sim­ple as pos­si­ble so that it is easy to cut it out. The draw­ing itself must ini­tial­ly be drawn from the inside so that there are no traces of a pen or pen­cil left on the out­side.

How to cut out a pic­ture (with­out cut­ting the edges of the sheet)?

With a util­i­ty knife. You need to make two cuts in the cen­ter (to get +). Push the result­ing petals, put scis­sors into them and cut out the entire fig­ure. You can gen­er­al­ly lim­it your­self to a cler­i­cal knife. They need to walk along the out­line of the draw­ing, and then give out the rest of the card­board. But you need to do this very care­ful­ly and on the sur­face that you do not mind scratch­ing.

With the help of sten­cils, you can make beau­ti­ful and unusu­al pic­tures. Pho­to: nevsedoma.com.ua

The shoot­ing process is also sim­ple. It is enough to take a pic­ture of the sten­cil on an out­stretched hand. The most dif­fi­cult thing is choos­ing a loca­tion, you need to find what will be vis­i­ble through the sten­cil. Most often they choose the sky (sun­set, dawn, bizarre clouds), flow­ers and oth­er plants, reser­voirs.