Take Better Phone Photos, Part 2, Composition Tip #1

by Jenifer Juris

In the first installment of Take Better Phone Photos, I showed you some tips and UI tricks that would help improve your phone photos.

In this post, we’re going to shift from tapping the screen to LOOKING at the screen as we cover my first tip about photo composition – look behind the subject.

This post is as much for me as it is for anyone. I am guilty of not looking behind the subject on a regular basis. I’m usually so caught up in the subject that I’m not even thinking about what else might be going on in the scene.

In some ways, I blame the digital aspect of digital photography. Besides the cost of whatever camera you are using (in this case, our phones), digital photos are essentially free.

In the film days, every photo had a cost to it. The film cost money. Getting the film developed cost money. Putting the photos into a photo album cost money. And when something costs us money, we usually try a bit harder to get the most out of it. So, each photo would be taken with more thought and care.

Today, I can literally take 1000 pictures of the birds in my front yard in less than 10 minutes (with my big-girl camera) and it costs me nothing to do that. And I’m glad! I love that I can take that many shots and then delete most of them in order to keep the really good ones.

But something about being able to take as many pictures as I want, also makes me a bit sloppy. Especially when I’m using my cell phone camera.

Here’s a scenario I was in this past week. My bonus daughter and grandkids came up to visit for an afternoon. The kids wanted to visit Papa at the shop we have on our farm, and so I made some brownies and homemade vanilla ice cream to take over to share with everyone.

The kids got to pretend to drive the combines that were sitting in the shop, hunt for special rocks outside around the shop, and eat brownies and ice cream. It was a good time!

While we were outside rock hunting, I realized I don’t get many chances to snap photos of my husband so I asked him if I could take his picture. I took this first one without even thinking about what was behind him:

First of all, he’s such a DORK! (haha) He lives to make silly faces in photos. I have more silly photos of Andy than I do nice photos and I’m totally okay with that. But now, look behind his goofy face. He’s standing directly in front of a tractor. And the tractor’s side mirrors are both sticking out on each side of his head. It looks like they are coming right out of his head or his hat!

There’s also some distractions from the other vehicles and the buildings. I keep feeling my eyes being drawn away from Andy and looking to the left at the shop truck.

And this would be the photo I was stuck with IF I hadn’t taken time to check what was going on behind him.

But this time, I looked, I truly LOOKED at the screen. It amazes me sometimes how easy it is to not do that one simple thing. And once I saw those mirrors coming out of his head, (along with his goofy face), I laughed pretty hard and then I fixed it.

The crazy thing was that Andy didn’t have to move at all. He didn’t take one step away from where he was when I snapped the first picture.

All I had to do was move myself to a different position and I was able to take this picture instead:

I mean, this photo isn’t going to win any composition awards. But, it’s also so much better than the first photo. Andy is the clear subject, with no distractions behind him. I now have a decent photo of my husband that I’ll cherish along with the handful of other nice photos I have of him.

This same principle applies to selfies, too.

Here’s a selfie of me in my yard later that same day:

This selfie isn’t horrible. But when I looked at the screen, I realized that the tree behind me looked like it was sprouting out of my head.

I moved my phone a little to one side and was then able to take this selfie:

That’s the exact same tree. I didn’t move my body at all. I just moved my phone a little bit. And doing so gave me a photo with a less distracting background.

And so often, that’s all it takes. All we have to do to get better phone photos is just move ourself and/or our phones in order to fix a distracting background.

So, the next time you’re getting ready to press that shutter button on your phone, take a few seconds to look behind your subject to see if everything is good. You might be surprised at how moving your phone even just a small amount can really take a photo from distracting to great!

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Author: Jenifer Juris | Contact Us
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