How to take Pro Photos with your iPhone.

You're walking around your favourite spots around town. You think to yourself, "Wow, this would be an amazing picture to post on Instagram!" You take the picture...you take it again...and again...and so on until you get the perfect picture to post. You add some flare and touch it up just before posting it or thinking about posting it and maybe you don't post it because it's not YOUR perfection, hehe. This could have been easily avoided if you just followed these 3 simple tips!

The iPhone has forever changed how we take pictures, view pictures, edit pictures, and share pictures with the world. There are roughly 100 million iPhone owners in the United States alone! More people have resorted to taking pictures on their smartphones than they do with traditional camera. If you think about it, when is the last time you used your traditional camera to take a picture? All this to say, the iPhone has become the camera king when it comes to smartphone photography. You may be asking by now, "then why do my pictures look so blah?" Continue with me to learn 3 simple tips to add that extra pizzazz to your next photoshoots.

Upgrade with the Grid.

The first tip is the easiest to do. Go to your settings->camera->grid. This feature will allow you to see how inline your camera is with the person or landscape you are capturing. There is a "Rule of Thirds" to follow if you want to get technical, but it's not necessarily needed to take pro pictures with it. When using the grid, you can take on different perspectives while knowing how balanced the photo will be. For example, when you are taking a picture of someone posing you can easily see how straight and composed the photo will be without having to rely on your eyes to judge. Go try it on your cat, dog, or partner!

Expose yourself to Exposure.

The second tip is a little trickier than our first tip. When you have your camera open and before you take a picture, you have the chance to adjust the "exposure". You do this by simply tapping on your screen followed by pulling down on the screen or up on the screen. You will notice a little box appear, which means it is focused on that source for how dark or bright the picture will end up being. Simply put, tap on your source you want a picture of then pull down if you want it darker or pull up if you want it brighter. Still with me? Great! Let's get onto the next.

End with an Edit.

The final tip is combining the use of an app called Lightroom from Adobe. You can also use the in-house editing  within your iPhone camera app. I'll go over both. For Lightroom, you can take the photo you just took and take it into some advanced editing on-the-fly. It is a very powerful editing app and it is based on preference, but guidance is provided as you use it more. For the in-house editing, you can edit the photo right away without having to use another app, bonus! Most people will focus on the first few options of changing the saturation, exposure, colour, and so on. The last four options when editing and "black point" are what will bring your photos to another level!

These 3 simple tips I provided may seem like they are overwhelming at first, but I promise you, once you start using it in your general photo taking sessions it will become second nature. Now that you have learned some simple tips, put them to use! The more photos you take and edit, the better they will look in the end.