Mumbai: With every moment in the life of millennials making it to social media, photography has become a passion as well as a powerful tool of self-expression. Travel photographer and Instagram influencer Naveen Soni (@thenaveensoni), shares with Deccan Chronicle, few mobile photography tips and tricks to create brouhaha on your social feed.
Download manual camera app with Raw image capturing capability: It helps you during edit to adjust exposure, highlights, shadows, white balance and even crop without quality loss. It also comes handy in low light, to increase exposure by reducing shutter speed, or increasing aperture. If you click food photos with select focus and a blurred background, manual app helps in precise focusing.
Manual app helps in precise focusing when clicking food photos. (Photo: Insta @thenaveensoni)
Carry mini tripod or gorillapod: This will help you take stable shots when you reduce shutter speed during low light. You can also record basic footage or even beautiful motion lapse videos. A tripod can also be used to take light trails on slow shutter speed. If you carry a gorillapod, it is lighter and can be used on uneven surfaces.
Gimbal for professional quality videos: It is of great utility to record steady shots while walking or while in a moving vehicle. It will give you cinematic pan shots that can change the game of your videos. You can control settings of your phone via Bluetooth from the panel near the place where your hand is holding this device. If you want to record self-videos while moving to show things around, ‘object tracking’ feature keeps moving your gimbal mounted phone accordingly.
Use gimbal for shots like motion lapse and cinematic pans. (Photo: Insta @thenaveensoni)
Use smart watch as viewfinder: Download apps that give a preview of the phone camera. This is useful when you place the phone in odd positions particularly while taking low or top angle shots. It is also good when phone screen isn’t visible in extreme bright light conditions.
Rise early for clean shots: It is no secret that an early morning or sunrise shot gives good soft golden light for excellent shots. However, another dimension of early morning shoot is that you get clean shots with not too many people around to distract attention of the viewer from main subject. You can also avoid photobombers at that time.
Use torch instead of camera flash: When clicking a picture in the evening with a well-lit background e.g. a bridge or a structure while you are in a low light zone, it is imperative that your face/body has properly light. Most people end up using flash that gives a burnt-out effect on the face and almost completely darkens the background. Best way to tackle this is to use the torch in a friend’s mobile phone to get constant low intensity light instead of a sudden burst caused by the flash.
Enable GPS: If you have found that cool location for a perfect shot or the view to gaze at, somewhere during a drive, GPS co-ordinates stored in your pictures help make recommendations to friends and family. It is also easy to location-wise organise your shots in one place.
Plan your locations and outfits: While unplanned trips offer excitement, one needs to do some preps to capture some memorable shots. Besides researching about picture-worthy spots, wear clothes that contrast with the background rather than merging into it. This can be a real deal breaker.
Keep your phone charged and carry power bank: If smartphone is your primary source of clicking pictures, this is very critical. If you are into video shooting, which drains the battery fast, so carry a power bank. Last thing you want is to have a dead phone.
