How to Get the Best Content Out of Your iPhone Camera

We’ve all been there.

You’re working on a great website, content page, or project. Suddenly, you find yourself in the perfect place to take some photos to fill out our work…but you don’t have your camera! Only your iPhone.

Is this good enough? Are there ways to edit? Should I even try?

LONG story short…yes! It’s worth it, and photos you take on your phone can come out just as great as a professional camera! To show you how, I will be launching this series on how to get the most out of your iPhone camera.

But first, a few tips before we get into all of that.

Know the Content That You Want to Get From Your Camera

Before you bust out your phone and stating snaping content—take a break, sit back, and think about the content you’re going for. Is it for a website? Gallery? Social Media (and if so where)? All of these decisions can make a big difference, especially the orientation of your phone.

When to shoot vertically

• Reels
• Stories
• Website sidebars
• Fill content – such as a paragraph separator
• Media for responsive websites

When to shoot horizontally

• Literally, any situation not mentioned above

Not sure what you need? Get some content in both orientations! And even if you think you’re not going to need a vertical photo, take a couple anyway. It’s always easier to sift through content than to kick yourself for missing an opportunity.

Touch the Area That You Want to Highlight

One thing you should NEVER do is shoot and go—you’re destined to fail, and then blame the phone when it’s just you being hasty.

If you didn’t know, or even if you did, iPhones have this amazing feature where when you touch the area of the frame you want to highlight, it will adjust settings – think lighting and focus – to adjust your shot. It can make a world of difference, in creating a shot that normally can only be done with a pro lens—especially in low-light situations.

Utilize Backgrounds, and Get Creative With Them

Remember, a great photo can be destroyed by a terrible background, so it’s important to make sure what’s behind your subject looks just as good. But what do you do when there is an unfortunate backdrop? Edit it, of course!

Best way to do this? Blur. Blur is your friend.

With iPhones today, you can easily set your phone to blur the background of your photo simply by tapping your subject or adjusting focal settings to create a natural eye trick.

Experiment, and see what works best for you!

Never Ever Zoom!

Lastly, and I can’t stress this enough, NEVER EVER ZOOM.

If you want to kill a photo taken from your phone, zoom, that’ll do it. Even a slight zoom can pixelate your photo, and essentially render it useless. It’s the one feature of the iPhone camera that is rather unfortunate, and something that seems to be sticking around, no matter how many updates there are.

Unless you absolutely 1000% need to zoom, don’t. Edit it later in Photoshop.

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I very much used to be the person who would NEVER be caught taking out my phone to sneak a photo to use for a landing page—but after years of doing this, and a few moments of necessity, I am a changed person. I have come to realize that being a good content creator means making the most of what you have, which is sometimes just your phone—but that’s okay! Trust your equipment, and experiment to see how you can utilize what you have.

Fun fact: every photo on this blog was taken on my phone. See? It can be done.

I am so passionate about this topic, I have even decided to make this a series! Next up, a focus on how to edit right in your camera roll after you take your shots. So make sure to follow this blog for more tips, tricks, and advice on what not to do!