best tips for smartphone photography

*Avoid digitally zoom
It just crops and enlarges the image, diminishing the quality

*Light it Right
If you want to get serious about smartphone photography, it’s crucial that your photos are lit well. Small sensors typically found in phones are not always capable when lighting gets poor, so it’s always best to ensure your subject is well lit when taking a shot. If you can get your camera shooting at ISO 200 or lower, you’ll see less grain in the final image, and photos will look clearer and more impressive.

One way to achieve better lighting for your smartphone photos is to get strong artificial lights, but this probably isn’t practical for most people. The flash also tends not to be so great, so you can rule that out as well. This leaves natural light as the best source, and there are a few tips to getting the best shots in the lighting you have.

Like when photographing with any camera, ideally the sun should be behind the camera’s lens, shining light onto the subject without entering the lens directly. Pointing a camera towards the sun will cause shadowing and a loss of contrast, so try not to do so unless you want an artistic effect. In cloudy conditions the bright sun can be diffused throughout the sky, presenting a challenge for phone cameras with limited dynamic range, so avoid shooting up to the sky if it’s not a sunny day.

Shooting into the sun can create an artistic look, but it might create dark foreground objects and poor visibility.
*Vary your angle
Try crouching down and shooting upward, or shooting from above, for a more interesting effect. Take lots of shots. Professionals shoot the same image dozens of times to get the one great take. Do the same, and delete the runners-up.
*Edit
The final piece of the puzzle that often stops a photo captured with a smartphone from looking truly awesome is the post-processing stage. All the detail and necessary information has been captured, but it may not look as vibrant as you were after, or as sharp, or as beautiful.

It’s easy to fix this: chuck the photo in an editing program on your computer, like Lightroom, or even use an app on the device itself and begin playing around. After moving a few sliders and ticking a few boxes, the results might astound you and your friends.