3 Tips to Take Better Photos With Your Smartphone

​Most blog articles begin with a long introduction. Well not today! Let's just get started.

Taken on iPhone. I feel like an ad for Apple right now.

​In this article, we will discuss how to:
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• Get Genuine Smiles from Everyone: Do people ever fake-smile in the pictures you take with your phone? Well you'll learn exactly how to avoid that and get everyone looking genuinely happy with a simple trick.
• Make Your Smartphone Pictures Look More Professional: Learn a super easy way to get rid of tourists and other distractions from your pictures so they look much better.
• Take More Memorable Pictures: Learn how to make your photos more memorable simply by adjusting the way people are standing and what they're doing with their hands.

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​How to Get Genuine Smiles from Everyone

If people often smile poorly in your pictures, it's not their fault - it's yours! To take better pictures, you have to direct people into good expressions.

So first, avoid asking your family or friends to say “cheese” for the camera.

Saying “cheese” creates a fake, awkward smile that won’t really connect with the person looking at the picture later on.

Instead, you need to engage the person and get them to laugh!

To do this, you can either say a joke or just say something super silly.

​Here are three absurd things you can try saying:

• “Don’t look so miserable.”
  
• “Relax your left knee, it looks a little tense right now.”
  
• “Show me at least 26 thousand teeth.”

And after you say it, you can laugh, which will make them start laughing too.

Those quotes are so ridiculous that the subject in the photo will probably start laughing!

A photo I took with my iPhone - genuine smiles!

​And if none of those work, just say a joke like:

"​I used to be addicted to soap. It's OK though, I'm clean now."

​By the way... did you know that you are actually more photogenic than you think?

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​​Busy Backgrounds are Distracting

It’s important to be aware of what’s behind your subjects in pictures.

Take another look at the photo above with the couple. I took it on my iPhone - the only thing behind them is greenery, which is not at all distracting!

It's important to frame out garbage and other distracting backgrounds, or if possible, position your camera so that instead of seeing a crowd of tourists, you lift the camera up high in the air where you can frame out the tourists at the bottom of the frame. Take a look at the pictures below (one was simply cropped a bit to get rid of most of the distractions).

Ideally the person taking the picture would have held the camera high up and pointed more upwards to see more of the buildings, but we didn't have that image as an option to show.

Too many distractions.

Less distracting but I want to see more of the buildings.

​Another simple fix to help your pictures look better is to use the “Portrait” mode on your smartphone. Most iPhones and some other brands contain a special mode that “blurs” out the background so the subject stands out against the backdrop in the picture.

Take another look at the photo in the last section - the couple. Can you see how the greenery is blurry behind them? That was because I used "Portrait" mode on my iPhone, and it made the picture look much more professional and nice.

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​​Everyone Should Be Connected:

If you’re ever taking group photos, everyone should be touching somehow, whether by leaning against one-another slightly, or by having their hands on another person’s shoulders, etc.

​This applies especially to family portraits and couple shots.

Take a look at the two images below. In which do the people look more connected?

My wife and me.

Our friends.

​The one of my wife and me would have been much better had I been holding her hand or somehow had my hand (the one just hanging down) touching her. Perhaps on her shoulder or something. Right now I just kinda look a bit awkward!

Contrast that with the image of our friends - they look much more connected. The only thing I would have changed with that shot is asking her to open her hand so its not looking like a fist.

As you can see, the physical connection between people in a photo tells the story of “family” or “team” and will make the image more dynamic.

​You might also be interested in learning how to look more confident on camera or how to take your own headshot with an iPhone (or any smartphone).

Finally, if you have any interest in headshots, you might be interested in why professional headshots can make a difference (vs having a friend take your photo).

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Now, how do you make your smartphone photos better?

In the comments below, please take a moment to share with our readers your top tip to make your own smartphone pictures better.

Feel free to mention anything - we can all learn from each other!