Improving Your Cell Phone Photography

Online success requires certain musts. You must be hardworking, consistent, diligent, oddly enough that’s the easy part. Other musts are skill based, some of which I have very little natural ability or skill in, such as photography.

Pictures are the essential way for us creators to share our work. They are a window into my world with the purpose to be enticing. Entice you to click, subscribe, or purchase. Unfortunately, when that window is dirty, no one can see in, or they don’t want to. Recently, I’ve learned how to improve my photography, and I’m starting to see the results. The goal of editing photos is not to magically make your work look better, but to help the camera represent your work the way it looks in real life. I edit to make the image on the screen look like what I see in real life.

Now that I have that disclaimer out, I’ll preface the rest of this article by saying, I am not a photographer. I do not use a fancy camera, just a cell phone. I have no special equipment. Here is what I’m able to achieve.

Original - not bad, but could be better.

Edited - notice the added depth of color.

Surprisingly enough, it’s not that hard and I don’t have to do much different. Here are the four adjustments I made in my process to improve my photography.

• Control the Surroundings

• Find the Right Lighting

• Use Manual Mode

• Edit with an App

Control the Surroundings

Early on, I would put a piece in place, such as throwing a cutting board on my kitchen counter, turn on all the lights, snap a photo and call it a day. But my results were always inconsistent. Brightly colored kids snack bowls in the background or inconsistent lighting due to the TV bouncing blue light across the room.

Then I watched a video by Cam at Blacktail Studio who posted a tutorial on how he shoots photos of his work in his shop and achieves consistent results. His method, while different than mine, did spark my imagination. In the video, he pulls down a black screen, much like a projector screen from school (do they still use projectors?). In doing so, he had a controlled, neutral background to shoot against.

The reason why this is important is two fold. One, you don’t distract from your workpiece with a messy background. Two, you have a consistent color for editing later, if the background is always black then you know can modify the color of the photo without the fear of inadvertently turning the background purple.

Most of my pieces are small, so I don’t need a lot of space like Cam. All I use is a black table cloth strung up in my office. I like the way it’s not flat, providing some texture to the background so it doesn’t look completely photoshopped.

It doesn’t need to be pretty. Just make sure your backdrop is large enough to contain your subject and allow for space around it.

Find the Right Lighting

Once you have your space set, you have to control the most important aspect of photography, the lights. I’ve struggled with this for years. I’ve spent hours researching how to improve my photography. One blog I stumbled upon was from Sally’s Baking Addiction where she talks about taking photos using natural light. I agree with her, it is the best option, but impractical for me in the Pacific Northwest, surrounded by towering Douglas fir and big leaf maples. Even on a sunny day we don’t get sun in the windows.

My setup, a desk lamp, you can see it in the last picture of my setup. I close the blinds, and often shoot at night, otherwise the light bouncing in my window throws a bluish-green glow over everything. Then I setup my little lamp, careful to soften the light by aiming the bulb at the wall to bounce the light onto my workpiece. It’s not the most efficient, best way, but sometimes you just use what you have and figure out what works.

Use Manual Mode

Pro Mode gives you extra control.

I use an android phone, it’s a OnePlus. I’ve been a fan of their phones for years, but it’s not the most popular phone brand out there, so don’t use this as a step by step guide, but rather a general approach to follow.

I have a picture setting called Pro Mode where I can control the ISO, Shutter Speed, White Balance, Depth, and Focus. Here’s a little about how I use each of these settings.

• ISO: This setting controls the light and is used in conjunction with your Shutter Speed. Generally you want your ISO as low as you can go. Higher ISOs make the picture grainy and don’t capture the color as well. In my setup I typically set my ISO to 200.

• Shutter Speed: Your shutter is the thing that opens to let the light into the lens. The longer your shutter is open, the more light you let in. Generally, if you have a low ISO you want a slow shutter. I set mine to 1/10 which means the shutter will stay open for 1/10th of a second.

• White Balance: This controls the heat of the color. If your white balance is off you will either turn pale as a ghost or orange as… well an orange. I generally leave this to auto and worry about it when I edit.

• Depth and Focus: I’m combining these two because I generally leave these two settings on auto. In my setup, I don’t need to worry about focusing on the foreground and blurring the background (like in portrait mode) because the background is so close and neutral it doesn’t matter. Occasionally I will mess with these settings if I want to zoom in on a corner to capture the grain.

I also use the gridlines to help me know when my horizon is level. I learned that you want to keep your horizon (the background) straight, especially if you are shooting something with straight lines. Why? I don’t know, but I do find I like the pictures with a straight line in the background more than one that’s crooked.

Edit with an App

Easily, this is the most impactful item on this list. The first three things help control the environment to make it easier to edit the pictures after they are taken. I’ll start this section by saying, my intention and goal when editing photos is to make them look like what I see in person. I do not edit to enhance or alter my photos to make my work look better, but to show off the grain, coloration, and other aspects of the project that the lens has trouble picking up without a little help.

I use an app on my phone called Snapseed, there are others out there, but Snapseed is free, versitale, and easy to use.

In Snapseed there are four things I always adjust.

• Tune Image (Brightness, Contrast, Saturation, etc.). Snapseed has a “magic button” which automatically tunes the image for you, that’s what I usually do, then fine tune as I see fit.

• Details, which allows you to add structure and sharpen the image, bringing the grain out.

• Tonal Contrast, which helps the grain and colors pop.

• Brush to paint the background darker after the previous adjustments by reducing exposure, darkening but not erasing the black backdrop.

There are other tools I use as needed such as Rotate, to straighten the photo if I took a slightly lopsided shot, and Healing to remove blemishes such as dust, especially in the background when they shine like a beacon.

Photo editing does have a learning curve. When I first used the tool I tried every tool it had, just to see what they did. Then I tried using what I learned to apply to my photos, experimenting until I landed on the tools I actually use. Now I have it down to a science where I can edit photos in a couple of minutes where they used to take me 10-15.

That’s it, that’s my process. I’m still learning and may adjust how I take and edit photos, but for now it’s working. Leave me a comment and let me know if you have tips and tricks to help me and the community improve.

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