Taking a Usable Photo on a Phone

The gap is not equipment

A current phone takes photographs good enough for any website. The camera has not been the limitation for years.

What separates a usable photograph from an unusable one is nearly always light, framing and effort, none of which costs anything.

Which is encouraging, because it means the problem is solvable this afternoon with what you already own rather than requiring a budget.

Light, which is most of it

The single largest factor and the easiest to get right.

Daylight, indirect, is what you want. Near a window, or outside on an overcast day, which is the best light there is for this and the one people assume is bad.

Direct sun produces harsh shadows and blown-out highlights. An overcast sky produces even light that shows detail everywhere, which is why photographers welcome it.

What to avoid: the phone's flash, which flattens everything and shifts colour; overhead fluorescent lighting, which makes everything look green; and mixing daylight with artificial light in the same frame.

If a room is dark, the answer is turning every light on and opening the curtains, rather than reaching for the flash.

Tidy the frame before you shoot

The step that takes two minutes and separates most amateur photographs from most usable ones.

Look at what is actually in the picture rather than at the subject. Tools on the floor, a cable across the shot, a cup on the windowsill, the customer's washing.

None of that registers when you are standing there and all of it is obvious in the photograph.

Move what you can, and change position for what you cannot. Two steps to the left frequently removes a distraction entirely.

A worked example

A kitchen fitter whose photographs were all taken at the end of a job in artificial light, with tools still visible and the van keys on the worktop.

The work was excellent and the photographs made it look ordinary.

He changed three things: photographing in the morning with the blinds open rather than at the end of the day, clearing every surface completely first, and taking a dozen shots from different positions rather than two.

No new equipment. The same phone, the same kitchens.

The photographs went from unusable to being the strongest thing on his website, and he began getting enquiries that referred to specific images.

His observation was that the tidying was the part that mattered most and the part he had never thought of as photography.

Taking more than you need

The habit that most improves the results.

Take six or ten rather than one. Different angles, different distances, one from a doorway, one close.

Most will be wrong in some way you cannot see at the time: a reflection, a slight blur, an awkward crop.

Selecting two good ones from ten is straightforward. Rescuing one bad one from one is not, and going back is rarely possible.

It costs nothing but seconds, and it is the difference between usually having something usable and sometimes having nothing.

Holding it steady

The most common technical failure and the easiest to fix.

Blur comes from movement, and phones compensate by using a longer exposure in dim light, which makes movement worse.

Brace against something: a doorframe, a worktop, your own elbows against your body. Take the shot with the volume button rather than the screen, which moves the phone less.

And check it properly before moving on. A blurred photograph looks perfectly acceptable on a phone screen and is obviously soft at full size on a website.

The counter-case

Where a phone is not sufficient.

Interiors that need a very wide view without distortion, where a proper lens does something a phone cannot.

Anything requiring controlled lighting, such as product photography on white for a shop, where consistency matters across dozens of images.

Very low light, or anything where detail at large sizes is the whole point.

For a trade photographing its own work for a website and a listing, a phone is genuinely sufficient, and the money is better spent on a professional shoot for the handful of images that carry the site.

Cleaning the lens

Almost too obvious to mention, and it accounts for a surprising share of poor phone photographs.

A phone lives in a pocket, gets handled with working hands, and picks up dust, grease and fingerprints.

The result is a soft, hazy image with washed-out contrast, particularly noticeable when there is any light source in frame.

A wipe on a clean cloth takes two seconds and fixes it entirely.

For anybody working in dust, that is worth doing before every set of photographs rather than occasionally.

Composition, briefly

Three rules that cover most of it.

Get closer than feels natural, then include enough context to show where it is.

Keep verticals vertical. A photograph of a room with leaning walls looks wrong even to people who cannot say why, and phones have a grid setting that helps.

Shoot from a natural eye height rather than holding the phone at waist level, which makes rooms look odd and ceilings look low.

That is enough for business photography. Anything beyond it is craft rather than the difference between a usable image and an unusable one.

What to photograph beyond the finished work

A wider library is more useful than a portfolio of finished shots alone.

Work in progress, which shows competence and is frequently more interesting than the result.

Details that demonstrate care: a joint, an edge, something done properly that a customer would not notice.

The team working, which is what an about page needs and what almost nobody has.

And problems you found, which make excellent material for explaining why something cost what it did.

Those categories are the difference between having pictures of results and having material you can actually write around.

Making it a habit

1. Photograph at the end of every job, not just the impressive ones.
2. Tidy first, always.
3. Take at least six.
4. Ask permission if it is somebody's property.
5. File them to the job before leaving.
6. Review monthly and keep the best few.

The first is what builds a library. A business photographing every job has hundreds of images a year to choose from; one photographing only the impressive ones has a handful, and none of it recent.

The sixth prevents the library becoming unusable. Six photographs from every job for a year is several hundred images, and without a periodic cull the good ones are buried.

Where those photographs should end up is covered in photographs that sell a physical thing.

Frequently asked questions

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.