{"id":41746,"date":"2017-08-19T12:33:37","date_gmt":"2017-08-19T12:33:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=41746"},"modified":"2017-08-19T12:33:37","modified_gmt":"2017-08-19T12:33:37","slug":"7-genius-smartphone-photo-hacks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/technology\/mobile\/7-genius-smartphone-photo-hacks.html","title":{"rendered":"7 genius smartphone photo hacks"},"content":{"rendered":"

7 genius smartphone photo hacks<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

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It should be easier than ever to take gorgeous, frame-worthy photos right from your smartphone. That\u2019s what Apple\u2019s giant \u201cShot on iPhone\u201d billboards suggest.<\/span><\/p>\n

If that\u2019s the case though, why do so many of the nearly 20,000 photos I\u2019ve shot on my own iPhone over the past few years mostly stink? The reason: the very people who took those billboard shots have a few genius MacGyver-esque tricks up their snapshot sleeve.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s not like you just \u2018point and shoot\u2019 your cell phone and end up with a billboard,\u201d says National Geographic photographer Renan Ozturk. He should know. He snapped this stunning photo of his wife, Taylor Rees, that\u2019s featured on (you guessed it… ) an Apple billboard.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things that\u2019s really hard to do with a mobile device, is get a photo that looks like it was taken with a professional camera.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Hard? Yes. Impossible? Absolutely not, even for a complete newbie like me. I met Ozturk, Rees, and a handful of other noteworthy smartphone sharpshooters during a week-long photography workshop in Cuba \u2014 one of the most photographically stunning places in the world.<\/span><\/p>\n

Tired of Instagram-envy, and determined to up my own smartphone-photography game, I packed my iPhone 7 Plus, an awesome solar-powered battery charger, and a handful of hair-ties (this will make sense as you read on, I promise).<\/span><\/p>\n

Here are six absolutely genius smartphone photography hacks the pros taught me. And one I even taught them, too!<\/span><\/p>\n

1.Tired of always taking the pictures and never being in them?<\/span><\/p>\n

Me too! Looking back at my vacations over the past several years, it\u2019s almost like I wasn\u2019t there. I\u2019m hardly in any of the shots, alongside my husband, daughter, friends, and family, because I\u2019m always the one taking the photos. I used to rely on the self-timer that\u2019s now built in to most smartphone cameras. But miss the countdown and it\u2019s retake city. And for couples shots? That obnoxious selfie-arm pose \u2014 out of the question.<\/span><\/p>\n

The fix: Use a time lapse app<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe hack for taking great group or couples shots is to download a time lapse app,\u201d Ozturk showed me. \u201cNot the built-in timelapse app that\u2019s native to a lot of phones like the iPhone, but an app that takes full resolution photos on an interval.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Why? Ozturk explained that rather than having just one shot with a timer that you have to reset every few seconds, time lapse apps do it all for you. \u201cYou can move around, even turn that into a movie afterwards, or just take single resolution shots that you can print out after for your family or yourself,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

There are several time lapse apps available for iOS and Android, but I like Hyperlapse from Instagram (free) and Microsoft Hyperlapse for Android (free) best, mainly because of added features that smooth out bumpy shots.<\/span><\/p>\n

Also, I found out the hard way why Ozturk doesn\u2019t recommend the built-in timelapse feature. Most of the shots we took with the built-in feature have only one of our faces in focus, even though we set focus beforehand. The apps fixed that.<\/span><\/p>\n

2. Your photo’s blown out (too dark or too light)<\/span><\/p>\n

I saw a great scene here with a bright pink classic car in Cuba and a happy looking local man sitting on a curb behind it. So I pointed, and snapped. This picture could have been really neat, if the car hadn\u2019t been totally blown out. Try as I might to recapture that vibrant, picture-perfect-pink color with a photo-editing app, it was gone forever to overexposure.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Fix: Tap the screen, and bring the exposure down manually<\/span><\/p>\n

If you find yourself in a similar bind, it\u2019s time to tap. Tapping on your target will let you adjust the exposure by moving your finger up along the side of the line next to the sun. Adobe pro Josh Haftel taught me this one, \u201cIt\u2019s much better to slide the little sun icon down and make the picture darker. That way, all of the details are still there and you can recover them with really easy editing tools.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Another Fix: Use your sunglasses<\/span><\/p>\n

You can tackle a bright reflection with a tap, but beams of sunlight, or a bright sky contrasting against a dark city, can absolutely kill your smartphone\u2019s ability to adjust exposure correctly. Again, beating it is so simple, you\u2019ll slap yourself for not thinking of it sooner \u2014 just use your sunglasses. Just like your eye, the camera lens is doing its best to fight the light and failing, so hold one of your sunglasses’ lens right over the camera. It\u2019ll dim the blinding light and take your photo from disastrous to delightful.<\/span><\/p>\n

3. Your photos are just…boring<\/span>
\nGood photographers know that often the best shots pull your eye to one particular part of a shot, and they often often use a bunch of fancy lenses to create the effect of blurring out the background, or foreground of a shot, to make the subject super sharp and crystal clear. But smartphones put everything in focus at once. What are we supposed to do?<\/span><\/p>\n

The fix: Portrait mode<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPortrait mode on an iPhone works great if you\u2019re about eight-feet or less away from your subject and really just want the background blurred out,\u201d Haftel explained.<\/span><\/p>\n

Another fix? Turn the camera upside down and set it down!<\/span><\/p>\n

But portraits are for people mostly so it doesn\u2019t work well with landscapes or objects. Try turning your phone upside down and setting it on the ground. This genius hack blurs the foreground and \u201cbrings your eye right to a certain part of the photo,\u201d says Ozturk.<\/span><\/p>\n

4. It’s out of focus<\/span><\/p>\n

Okay, I know we\u2019re in Cuba, but the example I want to show you for this one comes from a little farther north. My mom went on a bear-watching trip near her home in Alaska recently and, bless her heart, sent me these wonderful, albeit out-of-focus snapshots she took with her iPhone.<\/span><\/p>\n

The fix: tap the screen where you want it to focus<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s right. Tap and focus. No more blurry faces and bears while the trees and grass in the foreground look perfectly sharp. This works the same whether you\u2019re on an iPhone or Android.<\/span><\/p>\n

5. Your video is super shaky<\/span>
\nI learned the hard way that shooting videos on a bumpy backroad is an exercise in frustration. What did Ozturk suggest?<\/span><\/p>\n

The Fix: Hyperlapse apps<\/span><\/p>\n

The same Hyperlapse apps that take great time lapse shots. Turns out, they are equally as good for stabilizing shaky video, even footage already shot.<\/span><\/p>\n

6. Your photo still<\/span><\/p>\n

This is hands-down, the biggest game-changing hack I learned in Cuba. To get a billboard- worthy photo that rivals the pro\u2019s, you have to edit \u2014 even a tiny bit. It sounds like too much of a hassle, but it\u2019s easier than you think. Ozturk told me the Lightroom app for iPhone and Android by the photo masters at Adobe is your go-to here.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Fix: Editing<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA lot of professional photographers know Lightroom,\u201d he says. \u201cNow they make lightroom as an app that you can have on your phone and it has all of the same functionality, all of the same power, I don\u2019t even have to use my big computer anymore.\u201d A quick download and a few taps later, my new photographer friend took my newly shot photos from better to breathtaking.<\/span><\/p>\n

So what did he do? \u201cGradient filters, in the sky or water, bringing out the whites of someone\u2019s eyes in the portraits, and then just selectively bringing the saturation up for certain colors and not others. I think of it like finger-painting for adults.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

7. Here’s the one I taught them: no tripod, no problem!<\/span><\/p>\n

I have long hair, and I never go anywhere without an elastic hair-tie or plastic clip of some sort. These are perfect for engineering a makeshift tripod on the go. Wrap your phone around a glass of water, or hack it to just about anything stable – your wallet, handrail or even to a 17th century canon in historic Fort Havana, and voila! Instant tripod.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source-\u00a0https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/tech\/columnist\/2017\/08\/15\/take-best-smartphone-pics-these-7-tips\/549073001\/<\/span><\/p>\n

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