photography tips

With the HD powers of the iPhone 4S camera, iPhoneography is a medium even professional photographers praise. If you've become obsessed with capturing images on your mobile phone, here are nine quick tips from Stephanie Roberts to maximize your shooting style, efficiency, and effectiveness.

1. Discover your go-to shooting app and keep it within thumb reach on your home screen.
2. Get comfortable shooting with one hand.
3. Play with lighting and exposure effects by tapping on different areas of the screen.
4. If the image is well composed, don't delete it! You can work wonders with apps!
5. Capture different patterns and textures and consider using them as layers in various apps.
6. Few apps meet all your creative needs. Use multiple apps to create your own personal style.
7. Back up your photos often and keep your apps up to date!
8. Go to "Settings" to adjust photo app settings for maximum image quality on capture and save.
9. Keep a charger or battery pack handy. Taking photos and editing in multiple apps is taxing on the battery.

Source: Instagram user KristyKorcz

Thanks to the gorgeous rustic backdrops, camping trips provide great photo opportunities — well, except for that complicated campfire issue. Strange lighting, tricky exposure settings, and unavoidable weather conditions can make it difficult to take frame-worthy photographs around a campfire. Hoping to snap some pictures during your next outdoor adventure? Here are five essentials points to consider as you click:

• Time of day — First, decide what kind of mood you'd like to create. One of the most optimal times for shooting? Just after sunset. Still, photos taken in a bit of daylight can make for better lighting conditions and interesting background details. That way, you're not stuck with a pictures of floating faces beside the fire.
• Setup — Before you begin, focus on your subjects' faces to judge the exposure. Ideally, you'd like their faces to be lit evenly by the fire so that you can avoid awkward shadows. Easy tip: for additional lighting, place lanterns in strategic positions outside the frame.
• Flash — For a moodier effect and a flame-centered focus, you'll want to turn off the flash. However, if you do use a flash, then you'll be bringing extra light to your subject so that the exposure levels for the faces and the fire are more balanced.
• Composition — Consider the placement of people, the inclusion of surrounding objects, and the distance between your subjects and the fire. If your subjects are too close to the fire, then the exposure may be off, but if they're too far away, then their faces may turn out as silhouettes.
• Shutter speed — Don't be afraid to toy around with your ISO, aperture, and shutter-speed settings. A slower shutter speed will help to blur the campfire, while a quicker speed can give a crisp, clearer look to the flames.

Tell us: do you have any tips for shooting around a campfire?

If you're planning to take some artistic weekend snaps, then try this faux tintype tutorial from the Instagram blog to create gritty, unique portraits. What's a tintype, exactly? First developed in the 1850s, tintype photos are taken on metal plates. Below, you can see an actual tintype on the left and a digital version on the right.

Photojojo's Lisbeth Ortega outlines a few quick steps to help you create a faux tintype:

• Add a tilt-shift effect.
• Darken and add contrast.
• Add some warmth.
• Use a thin, black border.

Hoping to try it for yourself? Check out the full tutorial to create your own faux tintype.

Photo courtesy of Photojojo

A day at the beach is the perfect chance to capture carefree memories, but the brightness of the sun reflecting off the sand and water doesn't often yield the best photographic results. Before you start snapping away, take a look at three common beach photography problems and simple ways you can avoid them.

1. The photos are overexposed: Auto mode can overexpose photos, making them appear washed out. Experiment with the camera's manual setting. First set the camera's ISO (the setting that controls the camera's sensitivity to light) to a low number, like 100. A low ISO setting is best for bright lighting. Set it to a higher number, like 400, when shooting moving objects. Next, change the white balance, and set it to daylight, shade, or cloudy-twilight-sunset, depending on the weather.
2. The pics are boring: Transform a shot of the sea by finding a point of interest to focus on, whether it's a rock, crashing wave, setting sun, or flying bird. The object breaks up an otherwise basic-looking landscape. Frame the pic using the rule of thirds, and include the horizon of the beach in the background to give the photo depth.
3. The pics have a weird bluish lighting: Try attaching a few filters to the camera. A UV filter will remove the fog effect that is caused from UV rays, and it helps protect the lens from sun damage. Experiment with a polarizing filter to reduce the glare from water and to darken the bright blue hues of the sky. It can be used occasionally, depending on the effect you are hoping to achieve.