We have all been there before, when you are taking about a thousand pictures on your phone to try and get that one good picture, but you end up deleting almost all of them because they just don’t look right. After taking photography for a couple of years and having friends who can be pretty picky when it comes to their pictures, I have come up with a couple tips and tricks for getting the right picture.
For starters, if you are using a cell phone like an iPhone wipe your camera lens clean first with something soft, like the bottom part of a t-shirt or a tissue. You do not want to use anything rough (like a paper towel) because that can scratch the lens. The lens gets all this buildup on it- most likely from being in your pocket or bag for a while, or from being pressed against your face. I cannot tell you how important it is to wipe your camera clean before you take pictures. There have been too many times where I saw friends and relatives taking pictures at an event, post them, put a filter on them, and it is blurry, just like this pic of me and my mom. Help yourself out and clean your camera!
Another trick that I picked up was to adjust the focus on your camera. I know it sounds so obvious to just focus your camera, but there is a trick that comes with it. If you have an iPhone, (I do and I am not sure if this works on Androids or not, but I believe it does) tap on one person or thing in the picture to focus, and you will see a little yellow box pop up. When you see that box, look towards the right-hand side of the box and you should see a little sun icon with a line through it. Once you see it, slide the sun up and down that line and it changes the brightness and contrast of your picture. I personally love to use this when the brightness just doesn’t look right in a room or on friends who are a little bit fairer skinned than the others in a picture. This helps to take out those strong highlights that you usually get on your forehead like if you are standing outside on a sunny day or standing under a light in a room. I also love to use this while taking selfies because it makes me look less pale. The picture seems almost effortless and adds more definition and color to the picture. This first picture was without adjustment, while the second is slightly adjusted lower. It will come out focused if you do it properly, and the second is also an example of how you need to remember to refocus once you make the image darker or lighter.
Another quick tip, if you can help it, try and take a picture in front of a spread out light, or natural light. Another problem that I have seen with some people’s pictures is when they are on a beach or something and they are facing away from the sun and you can barely see their faces. If you can face your light source or a spread out light, such as a lamp without a shade or the light from outside, then there will be little to no harsh shadows or contrasts on your face. It helps to give you a nice glow that can be hard to get from an editing app. Here, I’m standing in front of my window and the light is nice and dispersed and there are no shadows from my glasses. My last tip for trying to take good pictures is to find out what your skin tone is. Some people have been surprised by this one, but it is so useful to know when it comes to trying to edit pictures. One way that you can check is to look at your wrist, face or neck and look at the color of your veins. If your veins look like they are a bluish purple color, you have a cool skin tone. If your veins look like they are a green-like color, then you most likely have warm toned skin. If it looks like you have blue-green looking veins than that means that you have both and are a neutral skin tone, but if they are very green-yellow looking you probably have an olive skin tone. This really helps to edit pictures because then it limits the number of filters available, which can be a huge help when you’re on apps like VSCO.(VSCO literally has hundreds of filters). It also helps to use a filter that matches up with your skin tone because sometimes the filter is that one little thing that just doesn’t look right, which can be because you are using the wrong tones. For example, the picture of me above, my face is pink. My shirt is a cool toned red, and everything else in the picture is cool-toned, so I would use a cool-toned filter. Good luck out there ladies!