Take Amazing Travel Photos on Your Phone with These 7 Tricks

Smartphone cameras have improved substantially over the past decade. So much, in fact, that with a few tips and tricks travel photos can be almost as good as ones taken with a professional camera. Use these seven tips and tricks to take better photos whenever and wherever you’re traveling next with your existing smartphone camera features.

1. Turn on HDR

HDR, High Dynamic Range, digitally enhances a photo by taking multiple exposures of the same scene and then mixes them together to create a more perfectly exposed, detailed photo – most of the time. Many smartphones offer HDR settings that work to balance the shadows and highlights of images, which can make all the difference in travel landscape photography.

2. Discover Burst Mode

Do as many professional photographers do and take a number of rapid-fire photos of a moving scene. Known as a burst, all you need to do is simply hold down the shutter button and the camera will capture dozens of images. After your moving scene is complete, you can sort through the burst images to find the perfect shot and delete the rest.

3. Play with Exposure Settings

As you may know, you can tap your phone screen to tell the camera where to focus. But on many smartphone cameras, you can tap and hold to adjust the exposure of your image. Depending on your smartphone, you will slide your finger along a bar or circle to make the image brighter or darker.

4. Learn to Work with Natural Light

Do not use your smartphone flash. It is always best to use a natural or external light source to illuminate your subject. This is because the flash on your phone can wash out your image or cause the colors and shadows to drastically change once photographed. If you are unable to utilize natural light or an external light source, try to adapt your exposure settings to make your image brighter.

5. Keep Walking

The zoom feature on your phone can be great to take images of mountains or animals from a great distance. However, the zoom feature on many smartphones drastically reduces the image quality of an image. Instead of zooming in to take a photo, opt to walk closer to the object to get a great shot. If you are unable to walk closer, there are many great telephoto lens clips that you can adapt to your smartphone.

6. Discover DSLR

DSLR, digital single-lens reflex, cameras are the standard for any professional photographer. However, many smartphone apps can now mimic many of the same great features of these expensive cameras. To access DLSR settings on your smartphone, download a camera app, like Moment or ProCamera. These apps utilize unique sensors that allow you to transform standard smartphones cameras into state-of-the-art devices.

7. Add a Lens

Utilize an external lens to improve the variety and style of your images. There are a variety of lenses to choose from, including telephoto, wide angle and fisheye. Some lenses can clip directly onto your phone, with others requiring you to purchase a separate case. Michael prefers the ones from Moment for their quality. Either way, external lenses can transform your image quality without you having to bring an expensive, professional camera with along on trips.

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