Confident creativity starts with your phone. Simple, powerful ideas to help you grow your phone photography skills, tell visual stories that matter, and unlock your creativity in everyday life. One weekly e-mail at a time.
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My Not-So-Secret Secret For Sharper, Brighter Images
Published about 1 year ago • 1 min read
LEVEL UP YOUR PHONE PHOTOGRAPHY
WITH GABRIELLE TOUCHETTE
•••
In my professional photography work, I'm known for photos that are sharp, bright and vibrant.
My professional photos:
The very same techniques that I used to take the above photos, I also apply to my phone photography to get my photos sharp and bright. My iPhone photos:
So what's the not-so-secret secret?
3 things:
NUMBER 1 - LOTS OF LIGHT.
Prioritize taking photos in bright light. The brighter the light (in other words: the most amount of light you have), the sharper, crisper and truer to colour your photos will be.
NUMBER 2 - EVEN LIGHTING.
Use an even source of light. Make sure you don't have lots of different sources of light all falling on your subject. Some light might be more yellow while other light might be more blue. Some light might be reflecting off a coloured surface and adding unwanted colour on your subject. The more mixed lights you have, the less your photo will look clean, clear and true to colour.
NUMBER 3 - EDIT YOUR PHOTOS.
Always edit your photos in Lightroom. I always boost my brightness, contrast and saturation. And always add sharpening and noise reduction to make them crisp and clean. Tip: If the photo was already taken in bright, even light, these boosts in Lightroom will look even better.
And if you're wondering:
"I have an old mobile phone. Even if I tried, my phone photos still wouldn't look that good."
Keep in mind: those iPhone photos were taken on an iPhone 13 mini and a regular iPhone 14.
Yes, if your phone is newer than an iPhone 8, it'll be easier to get sharper, clearer photos.
But still, don't discount your phone camera, even if it's 5+ years old! Bright light and editing can go a long way, even with an old phone camera.
To get started, you can copy my settings in Lightroom:
Exposure is set to +1.06 and Contrast +37
Sharpening is set to 92
Saturation is set to +12
Noise Reduction is set to 70
Ready to go deeper? Join me live on Zoom for my 2-part phone photography workshop. I'm offering a 50% off discount until Monday!
Hi I'm Gabrielle! I run a full time photography business in Winnipeg, specializing in portrait and commercial photography. This newsletter started with my passion for helping everyday people realize their full photography potential. With a bit of technical and creative help, you too can take better photos with the phone camera you already have.
Confident creativity starts with your phone. Simple, powerful ideas to help you grow your phone photography skills, tell visual stories that matter, and unlock your creativity in everyday life. One weekly e-mail at a time.
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