Iphoneography: How To Take Visually Appealing Outdoorsy Pictures With Your Cell Phone

You don't need a fancy, expensive camera to take pretty good pictures.

View of Aasgard Pass - taken with Iphone 7

 

Take a scroll through my instagram feed and most people are shocked to know that I take my pictures using only my iphone.  I don't consider myself a photographer at all, but I like to think i'm a decent, amateur iPhoneographer ;) 

There are a couple things that I always keep in mind when taking pictures, including how I compose the shot, balance, lighting, colors, and alignment to make it visually appealing and make people go "Wow! You're a good photographer!" When in reality I just walk up inclines to really cool places and take pictures while I walk.  

I'm convinced that half the reason people like my photos, is  because I go to REALLY beautiful pictures.  Its not me takin good pics, its Mother Nature bein real pretty.  But anyways.

The Enchantments, Washington

I'd consider myself an amateur photographer - I definitely don't know all the terms and techniques, but here are the things that I try to keep in mind while taking photos.  Featuring a bunch of photo from when I hiked in the Enchantments last fall.



B A L A N C E

Picture your photo as a scale.  You want the scale to balance out.  Say you have mountains and trees and a human positioned on the right side of the picture, but just some dirt and a bush on the left side.  The scale would tip waaaaaay over to the right.  When you're setting up your shot, make sure the scale is balanced - position the subject to the left with the bush, and the mountain to the right with the tree, so the scale is more balanced out.

Consider pops of colors when you consider balance, as well.  If your subject is wearing a bright article of clothing and you position them on the same side as something else bright, but the opposite side has no interesting color, it can shift the balance of the photo towards the colorful side.

Its my friend Dani! Taken by me.  Pops of color to the left, she is positioned on the left, her body is turned to the left, the scale is tipping waaaaaaaaaaay over towards the left.  To make this photo better, I'd position her on the right of my frame, or even having her turn her body to the right could have helped.  

The same spot, but its of me, and someone else took it.  I'm facing towards the middle, but the balance is still off.  The scale is a little more even, but still more weight on the left.  That big rock that i'm standing behind isn't helping.  Also, the lighting is really harsh.  Just not good.

Heres an example of GOOD balance/composition!  I positioned my 3 friends to the left of midline (picture a line going through the middle of the shot), and Dragontail Peak is positioned to the right of midline.  Theres a dark tree in the foreground on the left side and on the right, framing the shot.  When you look at the sky, the dark trees on both sides make it looked balanced.

HORIZON LINE

One of my biggest pet peeves in photography are cooked horizon lines, aka the line in the distance is crooked.  If it is severely crooked because it was taken at an angle on purpose, then its chill.  And if you accidentally take a crooked picture, it can easily be edited using Iphone's photo editor. I see the crooked horizon a lot with GoPro photos because you can't see what you're doing, but you can edit it and it will make the photo look SO much better

See the line where the lake meets the rock? Its crooked af.  Bad photo. Taken by yours truly.

Straight.  Das better.

LIGHTING

Lighting is probably one of the most important things to consider when taking pictures, no matter what camera or phone you're using.  You don't want it to be too bright, because the photo will look harsh and colors might be dimmed from the brightness.  You don't want it to be too dark, because then obviously you cant see anything. If you're taking pics of people, you don't want any of them to be half in the sun, half in the shade.  THAT'll make a bad photo. 

Lighting is something that you can't always control because of Mother Nature, but you can do some things to help, like positioning your shot towards or away from the sun.  Typically, I want the sun to be shining on my subject but not directly.   It really depends and it takes some trial and error.  The best photos i've ever taken are when the sun is behind the clouds or its setting, so its still bright but its not harsh and not directly shining on me or the subject. 

Photo editors can help fix lighting issues, but some photos are just beyond repair.

Here are some examples. 

Heres a photo I took in which the lighting was pretty harsh.  The colors are dimmed - the sky doesn't even look blue even though it looks bright blue in other photos.  The subject is wearing a purple pack and you can barely tell.  Its not dark out, it was just so bright.  You can see there are NO trees and the sun was directly above us.  Harsh lighting.  Not much I can do.

Heres a similar problem.  Its so bright that Erin is super shadowed.  This pic is bad for other reasons, but the lighting is no bueno.  The sun is more behind her.

So I knew the lighting was shitty, so I moved to the other side of Erin (or had her move to the other side of me, idk) and LOOK how much more COLORFUL this image is.  You couldn't even tell she was wearing a purple headband in the previous photo.  Way more Instagram-worthy. And un-edited.
 

 ADDING A PERSON (:

Try to think about people as part of the scenery.  I don't take pictures of people so they have a photo of themselves for the family photo book.  I take pictures where the the scenery is the main subject, the person is just part of it. If that makes sense.  It's not a photo of a person in a pretty place.  It's a photo of a pretty place with a person in it.  Does that make sense?????

Tips:
- Don't cut a person off at the joints. Soooo don't cut the image off at their ankles, their knees, their hips.  If I'm going to cut off part of a person, I do it above the hips.
-Remember those horizon lines I talked about earlier? Try not to position that horizon line perpendicular with the person, especially through their head.  See below.
- Watch out for weird branches sticking out behind someones head, position them in a way where it doesn't look like they're attached to a tree.  And when I say position them, I mean they don't have to physically move, but you might have to.  Adjust the angle you're taking the photo at, get higher, get lower, move to the left, to the right, you should be the one moving around your subject to compose your shot.

Okay, so the sky is overexposed (too bright) the horizon line is kinda crooked, and the horizon line is GOING THROUGH MY HEAD.  Not cute.  Dislike.

My left foot is cut off.  Where'd it go.  Do I even have one? Who knows.  See below for the edited version.

Show Some Sky

I think I have sky in 98% of my instagram photos.  The reason I like to make sure there's sky because that way, I'm not cutting off any mountain peaks.  If there aren't any mountain peaks, I still will generally show some sky in my shots.

When I think about the sky, it brings me back to balance. Generally, what i'm taking a picture of is probably somewhere in the middle, with Earth (dirt) at the bottom and sky at the top.  You don't want too much space at the bottom or too much space at the top, but I definitely want some space.

If I had to choose to cut off a person's body part or cut off a moutainn peak or the sky, I'd rather cut off a person's body parts. Thats how important the sky is for MY style.

I don't know what else to say about this, but here are some pics.

This photo makes it kinda hard to pinpoint what is visually unappealing.  The lighting is good, the horizon line is straight, the scale is tipped a little to the right but not horrible, but the photo just feels kind of heavy.  Like there's a lot to look at but with everything to look at, nothing is really that exciting to see.  Plus, the top half of the photo is pretty busy/messy looking.

Okay so the original photo does NOT have that peak cut off, idk what happened, but anyways.  This photo is MUCH MORE visually appealing.  You can see the full reflection in the pond. Its not heavy, the weight is still leaning a little to the right side because of Erin's body and the yellow larches on the right, but the weight is still more evenly distributed than the previous shot.

 EDITING

- I don't really have much to say about editing because I don't do much of it.  My friends frequently have me edit their shots, but I tend to just keep it simple

- Apps I use: Iphone photo editor, Instagram (I probably use Instagram's photo editor the most), Lightroom.  Thats about it.

-I typically alter brightness/exposure, saturation (color), warmth (sometimes I prefer a warmer tone or a cooler tone), and I might mess with highlights and shadows.  Sometimes I'll slap on a Lightroom present (I only use the free shit).

- Don't underestimate  the power of a good crop.  You can completely change the composition of your photo just by cropping it.

Heres the photo from above, cropped and edited.  I cropped off my lower body and I cropped part of the tree on the left, so I am directly in the middle of the image.  Theres a tree on either side of me for balance.

 

Before/After

Before/After

Moral of the story is.....

You dont need a fancy camera to take dope shots.  You just need to know what to look for.  Its not like I sit and go through a check list of things in my mind when I take photos, either.  I normally walk and take photos at the same time, I just take a TON with various compositions in hope that I love one or a couple of them.  

Everyone has their own style, and my photos are obviously my style.  

If you want to improve your photography, I think one of the best things you can do is find photographers you really like and figure out why you like their shots.  It's hard to identify what makes a photo visually appealing unless you study the terminology, so hopefully this blog can kinda help you with that.

Another of Erin hiking up Aasgard

Thanks for reading! Happy photo-taking!

-Lexi