Nowadays, more and more non-professional photographers among us love to take pictures of everything in our daily life: our pets, our children, our travel, neighborhood and so on. However, not all of us know how to make best use of our smartphones. Therefore, even devices with impressive cameras like LG G4, Lenovo Vibe Shot or Huawei P8 will not guarantee beautiful shots.

Try these simple rules and you will finally be happy with your photos.

~~> Find out about Lenovo Vibe Shot camera

1. Sometimes guidelines do help you take good pictures.

There is one simple rule for a good picture: “Rule of Thirds”. The rule proposes that an image should be imagined as divided into thirds (horizontally and vertically) so that you have 9 parts, either equal or not as follows:

The guideline is that you should place points of interest in the intersections or along the lines to make your photo more balanced and attractive. It’s also proved by many studies that human’s eyes go to one of the intersection points most of the time rather than the image’s center.

2. Forget the camera’s zoom, get closer to the object!

Yes, you should not use your camera’s zoom function because it will make your pictures not clear and look as if they are made of a lot of small dots and marks. Instead, you can either crop your photo or try holding a pair of binoculars up to your lens.

3. Create a tailor-made tripod for your smartphone

A binder clip is easy to find and very simple to be made into a smartphone’s special tripod. Keeping your phone stand still on a surface contribute greatly to the quality of the pictures taken.

Find out how to make one here

4. Fill the frame

If you are taking a photo of a friend in front of a beautiful landscape, don’t just zoom in his/her face. Fill the frame with the amazing backgrounds to give a sense of how splendid it it.

Vice versa, even if you want to focus on the landscape, the presence of a “little human” in contrast with majestic nature  will make the whole picture more impressive.

~~> What are the best selfie smartphones?

5. Play with reflections for interesting shots.

Before choosing your angle, look around to fine some puddles or water spots and create a new look into the old thing.

6. Care about lighting

Compared to DSLRs, smartphone cameras have very small sensors. Therefore, they capture less light and less details. Lighting is a key element in producing high-quality images. Perfect lighting to take some shots are the soft sunlight in the morning and late afternoon. Contrary to many people think, the harsh light at noon is not the best for your pics.

7. Adjust brightness, contrast, and saturation before applying filters

Filters can be found free everywhere on mobile apps like Instagram. However, if you want a nice picture which doesn’t just look like many others in terms of colors, try to play with other tools before applying the filter. You can adjust brightness, contrast, saturation, vignettes and shadows to boot the photo’s light and resolution.

8.  Use the sun for dramatic silhouettes.

Admit it, sunset and sunrise are two of the most beautiful times in the days to take a nice picture. Shot with the sun right behind your subject will create intense shadows and dramatic silhouettes that makes the photo look great.

9. How about taking photos when you’re in a running car?

10. And taking pictures right under or on the surface of water is also fun!

All of the 11 tips above are very simple, aren’t they? Just try some and share with us your results.  Or if you have better tips, leave it here so everyone can learn an improve their photos taken by smartphones 🙂