8 Tips for Capturing the Perfect Travel Photos With Your iPhone

Capturing fabulous photos doesn’t have to involve lugging a DSLR around with you.

Despite naysayers, your iPhone is all you need. In addition to drastically lessening your luggage load, essential for every traveller, iPhones are becoming the most used camera in the world, with 1.8 billion photos uploaded and shared each day.

The trick is knowing how to use your iPhone and what accessories you may need to bring along for the ride. Online travel brand travelcuts has shared a few tricks, tech, and basic photography principles that will help you up your iPhone travel photography game and get your friends excited about swiping through your travel adventures…

Keep It Clean – A basic, yet often forgotten rule of photography is to keep a cloth handy to ensure your lens is clean and streak-free at all times. You’ll thank us when you spot something you want to capture but can’t find anything to remove that smudge on your lens.

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Just Say NO To Flash – There is a time and a place for flash photography. Try to make use of natural light whenever possible – especially when trying to capture food or nature. There are so many stunning natural colour combinations out there, but your flash can often wash them out or overexpose your image.

NOTE: it is a lot easier to brighten a too-dark image than trying to correct an overexposed image.

Adjust Before You Filter – In the age of Snapchat, our first instinct usually tells us to slap a filter on. Although that may be the case for selfies, when it comes to travel photos you can miss the opportunity for a great photo. If you’re not 100% happy with your picture, try adjusting your photo’s brightness and saturation before you start playing with filters.

Accessorize – Although iPhones are now equipped with great cameras, if you are a real shutterbug you’ll want to bring a few extra accessories with you to ensure flawless turnout. Here are a few basic accessories you may want to pack:

– An external wide-angle lens to capture scenes in their entirety and gain access to small, close up details you don’t want to forget

– An external battery charger that allows you to keep snapping away without having to stop and re-charge at an outlet

– An external memory storage device will avoid pop ups that say “memory storage full,” and keep you stress-free knowing your photos are safe and packed away, in case your phone accidentally gets misplaced or lost.

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Let Your Subject Come To You – If photographing kids or moving targets, stay in one place and let your subject enter your frame instead of chasing them for that perfect photo. Chances are you’ll eventually get the shot (albeit possibly blurry), but you’ll also most likely be unhappy with the background. Pick a spot you love and snap away as soon as your subject enters the frame.

Two Photos Are Better Than One – An extension of the point above, take multiple shots of EVERYTHING; you can always delete them later. People blink, sneeze, or even make weird faces they probably don’t even realize when being photographed. The last thing you want is to capture that one perfect group photo only to realize your friend’s eyes are closed. So take multiple shots of everything and don’t forget to download your images daily to your external drive to keep your phone’s memory storage from filling up.

Learn to Love Negative Space – Toss out the rules you were told about design and composition and have fun with the space you are given in nature. Negative space can be a very beautiful thing and can offer visual interest to an otherwise ordinary photo.

Don’t Be Afraid To Get Wet – Sometimes your travels may take you to interesting places, some far off the beaten path, and when that happens you’ll want to make sure your iPhone is safe. Don’t worry about drops, spills, or underwater adventures with a case that was built for this. One option that provides the freedom to go anywhere with your smartphone and capture that perfect shot is Optrix by Body Glove. This specialized system centres around a highly protective case that is waterproof (up to 33 feet) and drop proof (as high as 20 feet), and doesn’t interfere with existing phone functionality.

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Now armed with these travel iPhone travel photography tips, why not record your next epic trip and see if it wins this year’s travelcuts film fest? Submissions open on August 18th. Good Luck!