Capturing Intimacy: Smartphone Photography Tips During Wedding
During weddings, we find it necessary to take as many photos of the celebration as we can. We want something to remind us of the day that we, the family and friends of the couple, have gathered to witness love bloom in its most magical form.
Since not everyone has their hands on a DSLR camera, we run to the most practical photography equipment we have - our smartphones. Fortunately, you can rely on your smartphone's camera to capture quality photos that can rival that of a DSLR's outputs.
If you're looking to take photos during a wedding event, here are seven tips in mastering mobile photography to get those superb wedding shots in a flash.
Let's lay a few tips first on taking quality photos on your smartphone BEFORE the big day arrives.
1. Play around with your phone's camera app
If you're already familiar with the settings and features of a DSLR, you can also find most of its features on your camera's app. If you're exploring photography for the first time, though, the good news is, it's easy to familiarize yourself with the app, especially when shooting on Manual mode.
To see how things work with your phone's stock camera app, try shooting with random subjects at different locations around you. This way, you can play around with the ISO settings, the brightness and contrast level, and other shooting modes such as HDR and panorama. You can also try shooting moving subjects so you can take photos of the action during the wedding with confidence.
2. Explore third-party apps
Some shutterbugs aren't satisfied with the built-in camera app on their smartphones. Either the app cannot fully utilize the powerful megapixels of their phone's camera. Or the results don't live up to their expectations. Or perhaps they find it hard to navigate around the interface.
Fortunately, there are camera apps available on both iOS and Android phones to alleviate this problem, such as:
You may also need to enhance or fix your photos. You can edit your photos straight on your smartphones with these apps:
Adobe Lightroom Mobile (also has a built-in camera)
Once you're up-and-done with these 6 great tips, let's move forward with some smartphone photography tips DURING the wedding.
1. Lighting is everything
The lighting on the venue can make or break your photos, so you must take into account the current lighting setting. For instance, sunny weather can bring softer, natural light, which is ideal if you're aiming for light, cheery photos. Gloomy weather will bring in darker lighting, paving the way for more dramatic photographs.
When taking photos, avoid shooting in settings with too-bright lights. Else, you'll get overexposed photos. You also need to avoid shooting in low-light areas, especially if you're shooting inside. Smartphones aren't winners in the low-light department, and your photos might turn out pixelated and disappointing. Always look for natural lighting inside like near the windows.
If the lighting conditions aren't suitable for the photos you want to take, you can still enhance your photos on photo editing apps.
2. Avoid zooming with your camera
If you want to avoid taking blurry, pixelated photos, avoid zooming in at all costs. No matter how impressive your phone's magnification capabilities are, you'll do your photos better when you move closer to the subject(s) instead.
Zooming lenses are not present in smartphone cameras. Your phone only enlarges the photo to capture the composition you're trying to frame. As a result, you get grainy photographs, like how our images turn out when we edit and crop them.
What you can do instead is to close in on the subject. This way, you can frame your subjects better, achieve appropriate lighting, and even play around with camera angles.
3. Capture your photos and videos in landscape mode as much as possible
Taking photos on a landscape mode allows you to include more subjects in your composition. You can also view your photos and videos better when you play them back on your laptop, desktop, or TV.
You can still shoot in portrait mode, especially if you're aiming to share them on social media. Just keep the number of portrait and landscape photos and videos balanced so everyone can view them properly, whether on their devices or photo albums.
4. Use the burst mode to your advantage
You want to take photos of the bouquet toss, but you aren't sure when or how to capture good still-photos of this moment. In this case, the burst mode feature is here to your rescue.
To enter burst mode, hold the capture button of your camera app (a.k.a the white button at the center), and it will capture plenty of photos for you. When you let go of the shutter button, the app will display all the photos taken, and you can choose the best ones to keep.
When shooting on burst mode, remember to hold the screen on the area you want to focus on to ensure you capture the subject.
5. Invest in lenses and other camera accessories for your phone
Looking to kick your phone's camera up a notch? You can buy aftermarket accessories for your smartphone, such as clip-on lenses. Thanks to their DSLR-lens-like capacity, such as the zoom lens feature, you can improve your chances of getting quality photos. For instance, you won't need to close in on the subject too much for the close-up shots since you've got a capable lens to do the zooming for you.
You can also invest in a tripod or a stabilizer for your smartphone to help you achieve steady, clear photos and videos. They're helpful if you've got shaky hands or if you'll be moving around while taking photos.
And the best tip of all...
6. Take photos as if you're telling a story
It's the main purpose of photos anyway - to serve as memorabilia of the special moments in our lives.
When taking photos during the big day, remember to photograph the joy and love emanating from everyone. Capture candid shots and shy away from posed photos. You'll find these photos do a better job of telling stories than the planned ones!
