iPhone Digital Photography: Phone Photo Skills, Foundations, Composition, Editing & Retouching

1. Welcome to Class: Welcome to fantastic iPhone photography part one, where you can develop the abilities to produce professional level photos. Without professional level equipment. All you need is your iPhone. My name is Kyle has left. And if you've ever taken one of my other classes here on Skillshare, then you will know that I'm a big proponent of skills development. I believe that we all should strive to be better tomorrow than we are today. And photography is a skill set that can come to your rescue in many ways. Not only will this ability produce beautiful images to impress your friends and family, but it can also help set you apart from others as you build your reputation and your own personal brand. By the end of this course, you will have come to understand and use the foundational principles of photography. And we'll have realized how the mistakes you're probably making right now with the photos that you take, you will understand the iPhone cameras functions far better than the average person. You will know how to edit the images you take and get amazing results. And you will leave this course with a skill set that will last a lifetime. This course is divided into four major sections, including 23 separate videos for about 2 h of instruction with a bonus lesson at the end. And this course is for you if you want to better capture moments in time, feature creativeness. Further appreciate the world around you and add a value skill set to your tool belt. If you have never studied photography and don't feel like you are much of an expert with your iPhone. I believe that this course will be truly transformative for you. So why not get started? Now? Click the next video and I'll see you for our next real lesson. 2. Primary Principles of Pictures: Hi, I'm sure you are really excited to learn the ins and outs of how to turn your iPhone photography into professional he photography. But first, I'd really like you to spend a little time with me in the beginning going over some of the fundamentals that are really going to serve to set the foundation to help you really up your skills with photography. Without these skills, the photos that you'll take on your iPhone or anywhere else for that matter, simply won't be as good. In this section on what I like to call the primary principles of pictures, we'll go over some of the four fundamentals that will really up your game. Those are having a subject finding the best Angles, Framing and composition and lighting. And really we're just covering the basics of these principles, believe it or not, we can make a whole lesson out of each of these four. And after this particular section, do you will have already leveled up your photography skills before even going on to what we're going to cover specifically with the iPhone. So please take the little bit of time it's going to require for you to go over this section before moving forward onto specific iphone related techniques. However, I do want to share with you one fantastic iPhone tip that I really love and I think you will too. And this should help serve you as we move forward through this section on principles. That is how to set and lock your cameras, focus and exposure. Let me show you right now. So let's take a look at this, this view here. Notice we have a foreground with this beautiful red flower here. And then a little bit to the left, we have in the mid ground our tree. And then in the background we have a building. And you may or may not already know that simply by touching the screen on the image area that you want, it will set something into focus. So I'll touch back on this red flower and we're back into focus. Not only that, let's go back to the flower here. When you tap on it, it's in-focus and if you scroll up or you scroll down, you really adjust your exposure. The unfortunate thing is that once you've taken a photograph, the iPhone will reset to its original focus and exposure, really to give you an average of the entire view that you have. However, what's really great and comes in handy is to set your focus and exposure to lock it. So what I'm going to do is all hold on the flower here. And if you hold down, you notice that the yellow box sort of flickers. And at the top we have a0 slash AF log that stands for auto exposure autofocus lock. And now you can continue to take photos. And the same focus and exposure will remain on the iPhone. Notice that it's a bit blurry as I scroll around, but back on focus as I come back to this flower. So this is a fantastic tip to help you with your future iPhone photography and the remainder of this course. Okay, you're all set. Now, let's get ready for the next section on the importance of having a subject in your photos. 3. Having a Subject: So what are you taking photos of and why do you have a purpose for your photos? If so, what is it? That's really the point today because if you don't have a purpose going in, then what are you really taking pictures of and why? One of the most important principles of photography is having a subject and your photos. And that really sets the foundation for this course. And that sets the foundation for your photos. So having a clear and understandable subject is going to really up your level for all future photos that you take. Anytime you take a photo or someone else takes a photo, our eyes should be immediately drawn to a certain point. That's your focal point. That's the focus of the image and the story that say that you are trying to tell. For the rest of this class, I may switch back and forth from the term focal point or subject, but in essence they're really the same thing. So today's lesson is specifically on that focal point and that subject. Nonetheless, whatever you do, you should always have that subject in your picture. Otherwise, if you don't, well, what is the purpose? What is the viewer looking at? And without it, It's going to have a sense of emptiness more or less. Let me show you a quick example of an image that does not have a subject and one that does and judge for yourself. Now, when you do have a subject and it's really clear in your mind and you've chosen that subject. You want to make sure that subjects stands out. It's there alone and it's not being cluttered by things either around the subject that are distracting or that there's something maybe overlapping or something in the background. Who wants to be clear and isolated? Now, when choosing a subject, well, it could really be virtually anything. Most people go for other people. So another person, man, woman, child, or baby are fantastic subjects. But that's not your only choice. You can go for other wildlife. Pets, such as dogs and cats. Nature, for example, plants, trees, flowers, the horizon, perhaps at a beach, or inanimate objects, such as something as beautiful as a waterfall. Now, they can also be manmade. For example, architecture. Architecture is stunningly beautiful in many places in the world. Really again, it's up to you. And when you choose a subject and you affectively photograph that subject, it in essence tells a story. So what story are you trying to tell with your photography? What story are you going to encapsulate? So as you go throughout your day, so keep that in mind. Think of subjects, potential subjects now, they're all around us. Now back here, it may look like it's fairly flat. It's a field. There's not too much to view, but to the observant I, there all kinds of things around us that are unique and interesting and would serve as fantastic subjects. So become an observant observer. What can you find in your backyard? What would make a good and interesting subject in your next photo? Now that you know the importance of a focal point, or let's say a subject. Let's do a little experiment. Why don't you open up your camera, roll, looking your album on your iPhone, and scroll through the first ten images. Is there a clear subject in your photos or is it sort of undetermined and not obvious? Now if you don't find you have a clear subject will fantastic. You're on your way to improving your photography today. And now that you do know the importance of a subject, in our next lesson, we're going to talk about angles. The best angles to use, and the common angles that people use that are not interesting. 4. Better Angles: You just had the opportunity to take a look at your camera roll and see how well you've been using subjects in the past. Now the next thing we want to take a look at are your angles. What angles have you been using in the images that you just took a look at? You know, most people will do this. They'll go photo like so. Click, click, click. And this is the average angle that most people are using. It's called the standing adult angle. However, it really doesn't get the most interesting photos. But don't worry, that's something we can easily remedy with a few simple tricks and your photos are going to look so much better, trust me. So what other angles can you use? Well, simple, either go low or go close. But let's take a look at a lower angle first before we go on to looking at something close up, let me demonstrate how going from these standing adult angle to a low angle can make a world of difference. Here we are in South Korea at one of the local parks. Behind us, we have what I would say is a nice example of Korean traditional architecture. So we're going to use this piece of architecture, this subject behind me in order to show you what it looks like to go from the standing adult angle down to something lower, and how it changes the overall mood, vibe and creates a more unique perspective for the audience. So let's go ahead and see what that looks like. Here I am at the adult standing angle and the architecture behind me is fairly well capture. We can see the blue sky and the background and the grass around this structure and the entire structure in an of itself. Now look what happens as we go down further to one of the lowest angles we can get to. Notice that the overall mood and perspective changes. It's these lower angles at really can get an interesting perspective on whatever subject you're trying to capture. So why not give it a try the next time you're photographing subjects. If you look at this angle, it's also pretty interesting. We have a nice bridge, and at the end of the bridge we have a tree in the center point. We can normally look at this from again, the standing adult angle, just like this. And we have the tree in the center. However, take a look how the perspective changes as we just go down just about knee height. Now that I think is much more interesting to the viewer. So play around with different angles, play around with lower angles that will create something unique, interesting, and perhaps tell a better story. However, what if you're going to take the photo of something that's already at a low angle. Well, what would most people do? They again, stand at the standing adult level and just put their phone or put the focus on that subject from the top to the bottom. Now, again, that doesn't look so great. It really doesn't capture what you're trying to get. Instead, what should you do? Drop your phone down and get to that subjects level. Here I am in the same park area at a different time of day with my daughter. Notice that I've got more toward her high level to take these images. It's a much more unique angle that if I were recording this from my eye level, what do you think? Now, again, I was suggesting that you take the time to be a better observer. In order to do that, we want to not just find interesting subjects that we otherwise would have overlooked. We also want to get closer to that subject. Get up close, capture that detail. Now for close-up, I happen to think that these flowers are rather pretty. Now. They don't look so great from this view. Since they're not a lot of flowers. But what happens when we get really close up to one of those particular flowers? Give it a try. Go low, go close. And you'll be so surprised at the different images that you create, the better story that you, you can tell. Great, so now you have a better understanding of angles. Let's get ready for the next lesson, framing and composition. A 108. 5. Framing and Composition: Hi. So you can obviously see that I'm here on the beach. I'm here with some family and friends for a real short vacation. And I thought, what a fantastic opportunity this would be to get into our next lesson. Now you already know the importance of the subject and now you're able to take better angles. The next thing is framing and composition. What that means is simply what the camera sees and in turn, what the audience sees. By taking a moment to incorporate eight of these principles I'm about to share with you. You will again take your photos up to the next level, something you've already started doing. But before we begin, we need to make a small settings change on your iPhone. We need to get your grid lines on the phone. So let's take a moment and do that together. So sometimes you may see me switch between an iPhone six and my new iPhone 11 pro. Here I'm using the 11 pro. So the sittings may be a little different from what is on your phone, but simply first go into settings and scroll down until we get to camera. Click on camera. And then right here in the center under the title composition, click grid. Make sure that's on. And now congratulations, you have grid lines can start taking advantage of the rule of thirds, among other things. And you know, just like most people take their photos from the standing adult position, most people also center their subject in the middle of the frame. Now, that's okay, but it's not always the best choice. I'd like to introduce you to something called the rule of thirds. Using the grid lines on your phone, you'll be able to use the rule of thirds by better placing your subject, thus creating a better feel for the audience. Oh, but before we do that, I'd like to introduce you to Mr. giraffe. Mr. Giraph is going to help demonstrate some of these principles to make them easier to understand so you can start incorporating them today. Okay? So you've heard me say the rule of thirds once or twice already and you're probably wondering what is he talking about if you didn't already know the rule of thirds? So let's get into that right now. Basically the rule of thirds is what you see here on the screen. We have the screen divided into nine sections. Divided by, we have two horizontal lines and two vertical lines here. And instead of placing our subject in the center, or let's say to the sides here, it seems to be more pleasing on the IE, if we place our subject either along this vertical line here or the one on the right. Or even better if there's smaller objects like this, if we placed them at one of these four intersecting points, it is, again, is more pleasing to the eye. It makes the photo simpler and it draws the eye toward that object and gives that object more emphasis. Notice that we've done this here with our shell on the beach. Now, not only do we do this for objects like shells, we also do this for people. Of course, when it comes to people, we want to place a person either again at the left vertical line or the right vertical line. And here we've placed our subject on the right. And notice the eye placement as well. We typically want to put the eye placement right about here or slightly above the horizontal line. And if we look in the background, lets say we have the sky horizon or, or some flat area in the back like we have the C. We want to put that line, that horizontal line, not in the center like most people do, but at one of these two horizontal lines now, we can see that we've placed it here at the lower horizontal line. Using all of these together will give just a better shot. Give it a try, yields see improvements immediately. So the next time you, your taking a photo something, use these rule of thirds and we're going to continue using the rule of thirds throughout this course in some sections. However, the rule of thirds is not necessarily a rule. It's more of a guideline. It's a creative decision. Now, as we're about to see pretty soon, some of these other principles that we're going to go over will conflict with the rule of thirds. So we can't use them both will have to choose one. And let's take a quick look on how we've used Mr. Giraffe for the rule of thirds. The second principle is direction. We want to take into account the direction that a person or animal is facing, posed towards or moving towards. You want to place the subject on the opposite side of the frame from the direction that they're looking at, so that there is more space in the direction they're looking or moving toward. This will give a sense of context for the space that they're in. Otherwise, the photo may become uncomfortable to the audience. Since we will, we will naturally try to anticipate what the person is looking at are moving toward that is out of frame that we can't see. It's just an uncomfortable feeling. So make sure that you have space on the side that that person is facing. Our third principle today for framing and composition is headroom. When using the rule of thirds. And your subject is a person who typically do not want the subject's head to leave the frame. Perhaps leave around two to three fingers width in-between. Otherwise, you may create a sense of crowding and discomfort to the viewer. Of course, this isn't the case if you're photographing close ups. Aside from that, leave plenty of space so you can capture the entire subjects head. Our fourth principle for today is symmetry. Now, this is in direct conflict with the rule of thirds. We have to choose one or the other because remember, these are guidelines really it's a creative process with symmetry. The reason we would use it is because again, it is pleasing to the eye. We want to see things that have symmetry. So we would place our subject either in the center or two subjects equally distanced apart from the center. And if you place a subject in the center, what that does is it creates a greater feeling of importance for that subject. You're telling the audience that you really want them to pay attention to what's in the center. Just like the rule of thirds can be pleasing to the eye and create a good feeling so can the use of symmetry. The fifth principle is called leading lines. Now, when you're looking for a photograph and you have your subject in mind, look around. Are there any naturally occurring aligns that will lead to your subject that we'll draw the eye toward the focal point. Kids, these visible lines in a photo that will subconsciously tell the audience where they should look. It will draw their eyes toward the subject, towards the focal point. And it adds an element to the photo that is somewhat captivating. So the next time you're out taking a photo, look for these either naturally occurring lines or something that you might see in the architecture around you. Number six is depth. Essentially, any image is going to have a foreground, mid ground, and a background. And it's up to the creator, you to choose what you show in any shot. The area that you place your subject will establish how they relate to the environment around them. Placing your subject in these different areas from closer to farther away from the iPhone hand in relation to other objects in the frame changes the sense of depth and feeling of the photo in general. So play around with this concept to get what you're looking for. Number seven is size, is power. If the subject takes up a large amount of frame than the view, feel that it's important and powerful. If an object is small, then the opposite tends to be true. As your photography begins to tell stories, you'll be able to better use this principle by taking wider shots with smaller subjects, giving a sense of insignificance, loneliness or being lost. And other shots that are medium or close up can convey more control over the situation. Additionally, when the camera is looking up at the subject, the subject seems more powerful. And when viewing down, the subject seems weaker. And our final principle is called negative space. This is essentially all of the space in the frame where your subject is not occupied. There could be a lot or a little negative space depending on the feeling you're trying to capture. This technique does not follow the rule of thirds and can add simplicity to the photo while putting even greater emphasis on the subject. You do this by placing this subject in the background and further to the sides of the frame outside of the intersecting grid lines. This technique will create contrast between the negative space and your subject, therefore, putting greater focus on your subject. So there you have it. These were eight principles of framing and composition that will immediately get you higher quality photos and bring your photography to a new level. Practice using each of these one at a time. And you'll notice that these principles will soon become habit. Next, we'll look at our final lesson in this particular section on photography principles. For this course. It's called lighting. See you soon. 6. Better Lighting: Our final lesson on the primary principles of pictures is, you guessed it, lighting. Lighting is incredibly important when it comes to photography. Just think about it. You don't really have any photos without light, right? Different types of light really have a profound effect on the quality of photos that you'll be taking. So keep that in mind as we go throughout this section and as you go out next time, taking photos of different subjects. So what are our choices of light? We have natural and artificial light. Natural is from the sun during the day, the moon during the night, and perhaps from a fire. Artificial light is from any light source that is man-made. Typically the best source for the best photos is natural lighting, is specially sunlight because it tends to be the strongest in delivers the best photos. We can also categorize lighting as either being soft or hard. Soft lighting does not cast strong shadows or give contrasts in a photo, like on a cloudy day, while hard light does like on a sunny day. As far as photography is concerned, people tend to get better results with software lighting as opposed to hard lighting. This is because the iPhone cameras sensor tends to capture more contrast than the human eye can. It becomes even more difficult to capture images and shadows. But of course it depends on the look and the feel that you, the photographer is going for. Tests it out yourself. Next time. Choose a subject that you'd like to photograph and try and photograph that subject on an overcast or a cloudy day, and then later go back when it's quite sunny outside and photograph that subject again. What differences do you see? However, there is a time of day that all professional photographers know about called the golden hour. That's the time of day when the skies are clear, the sun is out, but only low near the horizon. This is just after dawn or just before dusk. The Sun casts weaker shadows, the lighting becomes softer and the colors really pumped. Thus the name golden hour. So if you really want to get stunning photos, get your iPhone out during these times and practice shooting various subjects. And you know, this is also a fabulous time to take photos of silhouette. To do this, you only need to do these two things. Place the subject directly in front of the sun. And instead of setting focus and exposure on the subject, set it on the background, this will darken the space within your subject. And you'll be surprised at how beautiful your silhouettes turn out. Whatever lighting conditions you choose to photograph. And always remember, it's going to have that significant effect on the look and feel of your photography. And again, play around with different lighting choices, along with the different angles that you can use for even more unique photography. Congratulations, you now have a better understanding of the fundamentals of the principles of photography. And you're ready to unlock the secrets of more professional iPhone photography. And in the next section, we'll cover what I call the iPhone first fundamentals, sees it. 7. iPhone First Fundamentals: So by now you're on your way to better photography in general. And what we want to do here is get you on your way to better iPhone photography. In this section, you'll start to acquire the skills that well, your friends and family probably have no idea about. And it's these skills that will get you better quality photos. As usual, we'll start with the basics and then gradually work ourselves up to more advanced skills. What we'll cover in this particular section on the fundamentals of the iPhone include how to properly hold your phone camera Quick Draw the fastest ways to open the camera app. How to get steadier and CRISPR images, and how to get better picks in hard sunlight. By the end of this section, you'll be one-step or shall we say, forceps closer to better photography using especially your iPhone. So let's get into it. Let's go to the next lesson on how to properly hold your iPhone. 8. Holding Your Phone: Have you ever noticed that your hands are a little shaky or your photos come out a little blurry because he weren't holding your camera properly. Holding your camera the right way isn't something a lot of people think about, but it's incredibly important to get a clear photo. So I'd like to share with you a few ways to what I would consider properly. Hold your phone in order to get the best photos possible. But of course, this is somewhat dependent upon the person and also the iPhone that they happen to have. So try out these techniques and either use them or adjust them to fit you personally. So most people will hold their phone like this as we've already seen. And believe it or not, this is a bit of a shaky position. You don't really get a lot of stability from this position. Instead, what I would suggest doing is take, if you're right-handed, you can switch. If you're left-handed. Take your phone, your iPhone, and put your hand like such, where you get your thumb at the top and your little pinky finger at the bottom. So your three fingers or in the center. And you've got a decent amount of control here. Now, to add another element of stability, take your other hand, you're free hand, and hold the next hand. So your thumb is sort of out right here. That way you can move it around with more stability. Now, if we're going to take a photo, a great way to actually take the photo. So you, you maintain that stability is if you look over here, you can see my thumb, you just click like this and you'll get more of a steadier shot than, than otherwise. Now, that's on the landscape mode. You can do the same for something similar with the vertical mode. Just turn it around and use it as if you're going to maybe text message someone. But to add another level of stability, again, use your other hand, copy it like so. So you have more stability and then use your thumb will once again and take a photo. Clip. Not bad. Also, when you're holding her phone. And that stabilized vision, you'll get one added element of stability. If you use your elbows, sorta tuck them in a little bit. If you, if you really want that extra stability and use them also as stabilizers in order to take your shots. Furthermore, if you want to take a photo with a little more stability, well you can do is Azure taking your photo, come on down. Use your knee as a stabilizer like so. Put your elbow on your knee and use that to take more stable shot. So hopefully these techniques will get you better photos and CRISPR images. And again, take the time to practice these techniques so that they become more of a habit practice using some of these techniques to better hold your iPhone. Do it enough to where it starts to become a habit. The next time there's an event that you really want to capture your able to get your camera out and ready as soon as possible and to take the photos before that opportunity goes by. And having said that in the next lesson, we'll look at two of the quickest ways. Open your camera so you don't miss those opportunities. 9. Camera Quick-Draw: One of those special things about photography is being able to capture those special moments before they disappear. And it's fantastic when you're able to capture those events before they go away. When these moments happen, you want to have your camera ready as soon as possible, so the opportunity doesn't pass by. In order to do that, you need to have your camera app open and ready to go, instead of fumbling around your phone, trying to find and locate that path. So I want to show you two ways to get your camera up and running as quickly as possible and ready to shoot. In a moment's notice, the first way is to quickly open it loud. Your phone is still in the lock position. The second way is how to quickly open that camera app. If you're actually already using the phone. For this demonstration, I'm using the iPhone 11 pro, but it will work for virtually any iPhone that you have with a small difference. Now, if your phone happens to be off her in the locked position, you can open it. And the newer phone has this little function here where on this camera icon you simply, you simply hold it down and then release it and you've got the camera. But not all phones have this function. And actually it's not as fast as what I'm about to show you. So let's say in any of the iPhone's, if you are in the lock position, all you need to do is hit one of the buttons, whichever it is, and can simply swipe to the left and look, you're immediately in your camera application ready to take a photo or video if you want to. So you don't miss whatever you're trying to take a photo and that event doesn't pass you by. So give this a try the next time you are in the locked position or your phone is off and you want the snap a photo as quickly as possible. Now this next method is when your phone is already open and you want to get to the camera application. But sometimes we fumble because we're in different areas of the phone and we don't really remember where we put the camera app. Because maybe we really want to get that photo and we're sort of scrambling. So in order to get around that issue, what you wanna do is have your application, your camera app, always ready to go at the bottom dock here, at the bottom of the phone. That way, no matter what screen you're on, you'll be able to access your camera. So in order to do that, down here at the bottom, you have four icons or for applications that you might use regularly. We want to take one of those, whichever application you use less and remove it and replace it with the camera app. So simply hold down and hopeful down this browser, for example, in edit the home screen. And you'll notice that these icons jiggle and shake. What we'll do is lightly press on the icon that you want to remove, bring it up in release. Then we'll find the camera icon. Gently press, push it down to the dock, can let go, and then tap anywhere on the open area in your screen. And now you have your camera application ready to go when your phone is open, no matter where you are. So you can open it and take a photo as soon as you need to. Try this method. It's certainly helps. Now you know how to get your camera app ready to take photos in a moment's notice, again, practice using both of these techniques because you want them to become a habit or not have it, you're not going to get them out as quickly as possible. You'll miss that opportunity. So practice. That way. You'll always be already. In our next lesson, we're going to see how you can tap that shutter button without actually having to touch the phone at all. And that way you get more discreet and steadier shots coming up next. 10. Ways to Hit the Shutter Button: So far you've learned how to easily hold the phone for steadier shots and how to use your thumb or whatever other fingers more comfortable in order to hit the shutter button. However, there are some situations where that just doesn't work as well as you'd hoped. So in order to get even steadier shots, we do have an interesting solution. Can you guess what that might be? That's right. It's your headphones. You know, it's actually possible to take photos by hitting the volume up or the volume down button on your phone. However, it's even better by using your headphones. Would the same method by hitting the volume up and volume down, each of those buttons will allow you to take a photo without actually touching your phone. Tense, steadier photography, I'm going to show you three particular situations where you might want to do that. Number one, on your tripod. Number two, if you're in public and you want to be a little more discreet taking photos. And number three, getting down with those lower angles where it's actually a bit difficult to use your finger to hit that shutter button. Let's take a look. So just for demonstration purposes, I have a tripod here and some object that we want to take a photograph of. Let's get down low and take that photograph. After already having our headphones connected to our iPhone, simply put your headphones either on or not. Because remember, all we need is the volume up or down button. Put your object into frame, and instead of fumbling around here, simply click. And there you go. You've taken a photograph without even having to touch your iPhone. Now there may be also times when you're in public and you want to take photographs of something for whatever reason, but you're a little uncomfortable because you're out there in front of everybody trying to take photos and a lot of people are staring at you wondering what you're doing. Well in that situation, instead of going around holding your camera is I'd shown you earlier taking photos with all these people around you, where you can do is simply act natural. Hold your phone to where you want to take that photo. And simply with your headphones on a porous, simply grab your volume control and click the upper down volume buttons. Click, click. And really, no one is the wiser. You feel a little more comfortable and you get the shot, hopefully that you're looking for. Now, we can do the same thing when we want to take photos from lower angles. Earlier I told you that having one of the better angle decisions is getting those low angles. However, it can sometimes be difficult when you're really low to the ground to get down here and see what you're doing exactly in reach over and hit that shutter button to get the shot that you want. It does become much easier when you do have your headphones on. And you use the same method that we just talked about. So you can come down here, get the angle that you're looking for. As a little hard, of course sometimes, but once you get the angle that you're looking for, go ahead and release one of your hands, maybe your right hand. If you're right-handed, like me, reach up, look down, make sure you're holding the earpiece with the volume up and volume down button ready to be pressed. Get the exact framing that you're looking for and simply click. And there's nothing to it. You've got the photo that you're looking for, hopefully. So there you have it. Now you know that the headset, your headphones are a more useful tool than just delivering good sound and good music. You can take photos with a little bit steadier hands and steadier photography. So give it a try next time, make sure that you have your headphones around just in case you want to take photography in this manner. And coming up next, we're going to take a look at exposure. Getting better exposure than you normally would in harder sunlight conditions. See you soon. 11. Good Exposure: If you recall, in our first lesson, I gave you a few tips on exposure. I'd like to revisit that one more time just to reinforce a certain point. So you don't make a common mistake that a lot of people do make when they're adjusting their exposure. That happens to be that they're trying to get a lighter, look, a brighter photo, so they will overexposed. Now, that happens to be a mistake because when you expose essentially you're losing information. What you really want to do is underexpose a little bit. So in post, which means editing, or when you use a certain app that we'll talk about soon, you'll be able to adjust the image to fit the needs or to fit whatever you're really looking for. So the point being, understand your exposure a little bit more and underexposed. So you retain that information. Now, just to make sure before we continue that you understand what exposure is in case you don't already. It's simply allowing or controlling how much light enters the camera. That's basically it. You're allowing how many or how much highlight or how much shadows will be captured in your image. So once again, let me demonstrate how you can do that when you take photos. Now, here we can see in the image we have some fairly strong sunlight casting fairly strong shadows right below the image. Now remember the first thing you want to do when taking a photo is get your focus and exposure locked. For example, if I tap on the building itself, it'll focus and expose on the building. Now, take a look at the sky. Notice it's fairly blue. You notice if I tab down here in the shadows, it normally will do is adjust the sky to where it's a bit blown out. A becomes a little bit wider. Let's change the scene a little bit so I can better explain and demonstrate. If you take a look at the sky right now. And I've pressed here in the center right here to focus and expose. Now, look at the skies color. As I go here to the left where you see this treats a bit darker. If I click here and we see that the sky has become over exposed, is sort of blown out. In order to get the exposure that you want. Of course, you're going to want to tap. And let's hold it down to lock and then adjust your exposure here. And again, you want to go a little lower than normal so you can have more control over your photo with an editing application. Let's try it once again here. Once again, if I tap here in the center of the screen on the building, and then I moved down to the shadow. You may see a slight adjustment. So choose wherever you want to focus, lock it, and adjust your exposure to meet your needs. Great. So you better understand your focus exposure. Just as we covered with the very first tip that I showed you. If you haven't been practicing, setting and locking your focus and exposure together. Do that now, before we go on to the next section. And in the next section, we're going to take a deeper dive in to what your iPhone camera has to offer. That section is what I call fabulous camera features. See you soon. 12. Fabulous Camera Features: Welcome to the next section of our course titled fabulous camera features. In this section, again, you're going to level up your photo taking ability with the iPhone specifically and learn more of the ins and outs that the iPhone camera app offers you. And already you should be feeling pretty good by now that you've gone this far throughout the course and already know more than the average person would about photography in general, and specifically the iPhone camera app. And as you may have expected, as we continue through this course, each section should get just a little more advanced than the previous one. So I hope you're ready to dive a little bit deeper into the iPhone's camera application abilities. In this section, we're going to look at six particular areas, starting with the best iPhone settings to get the best photos, and ending with what's one of my favorite modes? Your portrait mode. So let's not wait any longer and let's get started. Shall we click on the next lesson so we can get you set up with the best iPhone settings to take, of course, the best photos possible. 13. iPhone Settings: Getting your iPhone Settings right will definitely ensure higher quality photos. So let's take a moment to better understand not only your iPhone camera, but also your iPhones settings. By the end of this video, you should have the skills necessary to operate your iPhone's camera like a pro to start off, can you guess where we need to go first? Yep. You got it right into your camera's settings. So let's go. Let's walk through the buttons that you now see on your iPhone. And let's go from the top to the bottom and from the left to the right. However, some of these icons may be placed a little differently depending on the version of iPhone you have. So up here on the top left, you can see three overlapping circles. This opens the photos option. On the right where you can swipe through different filters. As you see here. You can tell that a filter is being used because of the icon at the top left turns colors using a filter and want to get to the original, simply swipe to the bottom here where you can see a little dot to the left of the image and tap on that and you're back to your original. Now, these can be fun, but I would recommend not using them as they are already preset for you. Instead, I would suggest using another application to a gesture images after you've taken photos. And that's something we'll cover soon in another video. So simply tap at the top left and you can exit the filters. The next option is the self timer. You can select off three seconds or ten seconds. This is great when you want to take photos of yourself and others without having to hold the camera. However, for now, let's keep that all. The icon that seems to look like a sign is what we call live videos. What happens here is a short video is taken just before and just after you take your photo. We look more at this later in another video. But it's often a good idea to leave it on like so. If there's a lot of action in the scene, so it's really up to you. But for now, I'm going to keep it on this next button, which says, as you see, HDR, Well, as I've just said, will look more into this option in detail soon. But for now, let's leave it on auto As you see, I already have listed and at the very bottom left, we have the Flash icon. And as we can see right here, I have it as off, which I suggest you do the same. So it is generally best to leave this off because the fashion doesn't lie a subject very well. We want to control the lighting and exposure ourselves in most situations. So as I just said, let's leave this one off. Now on the right side of the phone, at the top, you can see an icon of a camera with circular arrows. This button will switch from the back facing cameras to the front-facing camera or selfie camera. And unless you have one of the newer iPhones, the selfie camera will have fewer megapixels than the back facing cameras, which will give you a lower quality photo. So whenever possible, try sticking to the back facing cameras for better photos. Now, in the center on the right is the shutter button. Obviously, you already are aware that this button shoots photos for you. So there's no need to really speak about it. However, directly to the left of the shutter button, you might, or you might not see a 1X, possibly a 2x, and even a 0 or 0.5 x. Now, on this particular phone, the iPhone six s, I only have one back facing camera, so I don't really have any options. If you have a newer phone, let's say like my iPhone 11, you'll have three options. You'll have a 1X, which is your wide angle. You'll have a 2x, which is your telescopic angle. And you'll have a 0.5, which is an ultra wide angle. But of course, this will vary depending on the iPhone that you have. So play around with those if you have these options. And at the very bottom right, you have the latest photo you took and access to the camera roll. And finally, you see this scrollable area here. This lists all of the photos and video options you have with the camera itself, such as and I'll scroll here, such as time-lapse, which it'll take one photo every few integrals of seconds, let's say, which put together it gives the illusion of time going quickly. You have slow motion, which let's say We'll take a 120 frames per second. It gives the illusion of time slowing down or slow motion video. Regular video, as you would guess. Of course our photo options here. Now there are other photo options as well. We have the square option, which gives you equal sides on all four sides. Now, this may be good for, let's say, Instagram, but I would suggest not using it because you can always crop your photos later, which would give you more control over the image itself. And piano or panoramic. Now this is another interesting option on your phone, and it's something we'll take a look at in depth in a lesson coming up fairly soon. Now there's one more feature that we don't have here, and that's the portrait option on my iPhone six, we don't have a portrait option, but on my iPhone 11, We certainly do. And we'll go further into using the portrait option as we progress throughout these lessons. And finally, one easy way to scroll throughout these particular modes is you can simply touch the screen and scroll up and scroll down. This gives you a little bit more ease and control over these settings. Great. Now you have the appropriate settings to take great pictures on your iPhone. And you're aware of all of the modes that your camera application comes with. But we still had a lot to cover. In the next lesson, coming right up, we'll look at how to use the burst mode and in what situations you might want to use it, coming right up. 14. Burst Mode: If you recall, in one of our previous lessons, we learned how to quickly open your camera app in two different ways so that you don't miss any photo opportunities. Well, there is another option that will allow you to do the same thing in a slightly different way. When you have opportunities where the action plays out in front of you, usually at a more rapid pace. And that is called your burst mode. But burst mode does, is it allows you to take several photos almost instantly, and then later go through those photos and choose the ones that you like and discard the others. That way, as some action plays out, you're able to get the photograph and the image that you really are looking for. And in this lesson, you'll learn how to do all of this starting right now. So let's assume you want to take a photograph of something in the nature. I've chosen bees, for example, because they happened to be around me at the time, outside. And in order to take a burst mode set of photographs, what you wanna do of course, is first, get out your camera app. Choose your subject, and always remember that at first, you want to set and lock your exposure and your focus. Once you've done that and you more or less have framed your shot, you can go ahead and take a burst set of photo. Now, it's different on the older phones. On the older phones, all you need to do is press and continuously hold down the shutter button and you will get that burst mode. However, as I'm using here, my iPhone 11 pro, instead of holding it down, you need to press on the shutter button and slide either down or slide to the left. That will enable burst mode. And as you see here, U2 will be able to take a series of photos at once, almost instantaneously. And now, when it's time to choose the photos that you want to keep and discard the others. Simply click on your photos application like so. Scroll until you find the area where it looks like there are several photographs stacked on top of each other, like right here. And this is your burst move set of photos. Click on that and you can see at the top it'll say burst plus the number of photos that you took within that burst mode, you can scroll by coming down to the bottom and click the Select button. From here. These are only your photos. Now you can either scroll from the very bottom, left and right, or from the top left and right. As you do that, choose the one photo or several photos that you want to keep. And do so by clicking the little circle here at the bottom right. When you do that, you'll see it turns blue with a little white checkmark. That means you want to keep that photo. Let's say I want to keep two photos. I'll click on two of them here. And then when you've done that, click on the Done at the top right and you'll get this question. Would you like to keep all of these photos or keep only the two that I've selected. Now here, I'll click Keep Only my two favorites. And what that's done is it's kept those two photos but discarded the others that you don't want. And ladies and gentlemen, that is how you use burst mode. So as you can see, burst mode can be a really helpful feature. And what I suggest doing before you actually need to use burst mode. And before that opportunity arises, go ahead and spend a little time practicing how to use burst mode. So you're really comfortable with that function. Because remember it can be a little different from the old phones to the new phones. And of course it's a little different than using the shutter button itself. So give it a, a few tries, so you're more comfortable using this function. And in the next lesson, we will look at something called high dynamic range, which you may have already seen on the camera app itself. Listed as the initials HD are coming up really soon. See you in that lesson next. 15. Using HDR: One of the most advanced features on your iPhone is your high dynamic range feature, which is also known as your HDR function. Now this is interesting because what it does in situations like we have here in daylight when you have high exposure, high-contrast, hard sunlight, all of this together. Here you're presented with a difficult photography situation. You want to get the right exposure. You don't want things too bright or too dark. What HDR does for you is it takes several photos at the same time, blends them together to give you the most balanced photo possible. Now it's usually best to keep your HDR off because if it's set on the on position, it could drain your battery over time. Also, if you set it to auto, you really have less control over the photos you're taking. So I would suggest keeping your HER on the off physician. However, it's really up to you and you can make that decision after we go through out this lesson on HDR. So let me demonstrate to you using the background that we have here of this interesting statue and the pretty trees in the background, as well as the somewhat Blue Sky that we have today. So what we do if we open our camera application and we look up here. So we would frame our photo. If you look to the left at the bottom, we have the HDR set as off. Now if I just click on that, we can go to on. And you notice we have the HDR icon at the top. Now remember, the first thing we wanna do is set our focus and exposure. Now notice if I click on the sky, the exposure changes a bit. If I click on the statute itself, it does as well. So for all intents and purposes, let's click on the statute itself. Lock our focus and exposure and take a photograph. What's happened now is that photograph has been taken with several photos combined together to give you the best possible photograph. Actually, if we go ahead and open up our photos here, we notice that we have two photos together. One photo is a normal photo and the other photo is your HDR photo. If we click on the first photo, this is your normal photo. And if we scroll over, this is your HDR photo. You can tell this because it has the HDR icon at the top left. Now, sometimes these photos can be very similar. Sometimes they may be quite different because different situations will create different results. I personally think that the HDR version is better, So I would keep that. And the reason that HDR has kept one normal photo and one HER photo is that earlier in our lessons, we went to the settings and we went down to our camera. And here we click the keep normal photo. If you haven't already done that, I suggest you do so just so you have a normal photo and in HDR, and you can choose which photo works best for you. So once again, as usual, play around with this function as you've done with other camera functions that we've covered throughout this course. And after you've done that, decide for yourself. Do you want to keep your HER function off on or on auto? And in the next lesson, we're going to cover the panoramic function on your eye camera. This should be an interesting lesson, so stick around and I'll see you soon. 16. Panoramas: So here we are again, back at the library, as you can see behind me. And I think this is a fabulous place to demonstrate the next lesson. We're actually this lesson if you've never heard of a panorama. Well, this lesson is definitely for you because not only is it interesting, it's also a little fun. And if you do know what a panorama is and you've tried it in the past. You may have come across some difficulties in getting the right shot. But with today's technology and the high phone, it's easier than ever. Now if you're not familiar with what a panorama is. And basically it's getting a wide shot of your subject or landscape in a much more comprehensive way than you could with just one lens. And essentially what it is is taking several images back to back and stitching them together across that landscape, giving you a much wider angle of what you'd be looking at if you were there in person. So the next time you're out traveling or you're in an area that has a beautiful landscape and you can't quite get that picture into your frame. Your best option is definitely a panorama. So let me show you how to do that right now. So the first thing you want to do is get the correct height, because the height of your shot is going to make a difference. So that I'm doing right here is I'm pretty much aligning the horizontal line where the arrow is with the horizontal of my background. Next, decide if you're going to move from left to right or right to left. Now, with a panorama, you may not be able to get exactly 360 degrees, but you will be able to get something much wider than what you would with just a regular lens. Next, what you wanna do is choose the subject that is of most interest to you and that's going to be the center of the library here. And then set and lock your focus and exposure. Just like so. Now once again, once you've decided if you go into move left or right, you can just click on this arrow and it will switch back and forth to suit whichever direction you choose. So I'm going to start from the left. Simply click the shutter button and start scrolling from the left to the right. Now, as I approach my main subject, if I go down a little bit and to the right, notice that I'm not getting the full image to correct that. Simply scroll back up and you've got it. Continue until you finish the area that you want to end at. And then to conclude, simply go back in the opposite direction and it finishes the image for you. And that is how you capture fantastic images. Panorama mode on your iPhone. Try making this interesting feature apart of your photography tool belt and capture amazing images. The next time you're out in a beautiful landscape, somewhat like today, if not better. And coming up next, we'll take a look at the live photos option in your camera, something we've already slightly touched on, but we'll take a deeper depth look into coming up next. 17. Live Photos: Do you recall the option on your iPhone called Live? Well, that's the icon that when you open up your application on the left side, it sort of looks like a few concentric circles or maybe a sun, especially when it's on and turns the color yellow, maybe orange. Well, that's your live photos option. And essentially, what this option does is when you take a photo, it records a mini video, a small amount before you hit the shutter button, and a small amount after you hit the shutter button. And in this lesson, we're going to look at how to best use the live photos option. And additionally, we're going to look at some interesting special effects that are automatically generated on your iPhone. Now, when scrolling through your photo roll, you can tell which photos are regular and which are live, because the live photos will be marked as such in the top left corner. And you can play that short video simply by lightly tapping and holding the image just like this. A good time to use live photos is usually anytime where we have some sort of action going on. Now, similar to our Burst mode, if you want to catch some sort of action and get the perfect image in the middle of that action. You could use live photos, but it also comes in handy. Let's say if you're taking a family photo or a photo friends, everyone's hosed looking into the camera, but you wanna make sure no one's blinking and everyone is smiling at the same time. This is a great time to use like photos as well. Actually, there can be all kinds of instances where you might want to use live photos. So you can of course make that decision. Otherwise, you might want to keep live photos off because it does take up a little bit more storage space because of course it is a small video. It takes up more processing power, and it does drain the battery a little quicker than otherwise. But again, it's your choice and you always will know whether your live photos is on or off simply by looking at the icon when you're in your iPhone camera application, it'll have that little circle lit up in orange. It's off. However, if it's not orange, instead it's white with a little cross or little dash through it. So keep that in mind the next time you have your application open and you're about to take photo. Recently, I visited an amusement park in South Korea with my daughter and thought this would be a fantastic opportunity to demonstrate to you how to use this feature. Let's take a look at how to use a live photos on your iPhone right now. So here I am in front of an interesting water fountain that I thought might be a good opportunity to show you more about live photos. When taking a photo, you want to remember that you are taking a short video again before and after you press the shutter button, try to hold your phone as still as possible, a few seconds before, and a few seconds after you take that photo and law, you have a photo taken through live photos. And once again, as we're scrolling throughout her photo album, Let's take a look at that photo of the fountain here. And in this photo, once again, as I showed you earlier, you can tap on it and it will play the video. But if you hold it down and scroll up, notice that we have these effects here. Now on the left, it says alive now, that's just the regular live photo that you've taken, but the next three are a little different. Next we have a loop and what that does, it continuously plays that video over and over. And this can be especially interesting for this particular photo because it's a water fountain and it gives it the impression that this water fountain continues. And you see it goes over and over as it changes colors. Now if we go back and we click on bounds, will bounce does, is it'll go forward and then backward, forward and the backward. Now this is a little strange in this picture, but it might be interesting if you actually had something, for example, a bouncing ball, play with this and who knows what kind of fun stuff you can come up with. And finally, if we go down and click law exposure, what this does is it takes the video and puts it all together in, as it says, a long exposure and gives an interesting illusion that the water is all meshed together. And this could be interesting for things such as night photography. For example, if you're getting a live photo of cars moving in the background or some sort of lights shining and moving at the same time. Furthermore, if you want to edit your video, you can just go ahead and come up and click the edit button at the top right here. And on the right side, the same icon for live photos. If you click on that, notice at the bottom, we have all of the images here that you can scroll through that are part of that particular mini video. And if you want one to be your main photo, your key photo, you can switch to that. For example, instead of having a purple color in the background or purple light, I could switch it up and go to any of the other colors that we have here. In addition, if you want to take something out of the photo and make it a little shorter, on the right, you can scroll and make it a shorter video from the end or from the beginning, making it a bit of a shorter video. So as you can see, this is a pretty versatile feature on your iPhone that you can really have some fun with. What photos will you take with live photos, play with this option and see what works best for you. And coming up in our next video, let's take a look more at portrait photos and how to best use those. When of course, taking portraits, coming right up. 18. Portrait Mode: So if your iPhone is new enough and you have an updated operating system, you should be able to see the portrait mode when you open up your iPhone camera application. What's interesting about this mode is that it places your subject in focus and it blurs out the background, which is really something difficult to do on a typical phone because the cameras are usually not sophisticated enough to do that. You would normally need a nice piece of equipment, really nice camera to do this depth of field. However, we're in luck since we have the iPhone and the newest technology available. So you can take advantage of this interesting feature on your iPhone and get some really impressive photos. I was recently at a pumpkin carving event here in South Korea with my family. And I use this feature to take a few photos. And well, you tell me what you think about these photos that I've taken. So in order to use a portrait mode, open up your application and choose portrait. To get that nice depth of field or blur in the background, you need a clear subject. Now, I'm using my little cactus neon light here that I have in my studio as an example. Now notice as I bring this close to the camera, if you see at the top, the cameras asking me to move farther away. And as I do that, and it gets into the right frame, notice a few things happen. The background is blurred out, which makes the cactus pop. And at the bottom here we see that it says natural light. That means that the functions are working properly. So keep in mind that you need your subject to not be too close or too far away. And you'll get some help from the app itself to let you know if you framed your subject properly. You'll know that mostly because the background has blurred out. So let's take a look at some of these functions here. Right here we have our natural light. And it is, as it would say, if you're outside is going to give you a more natural, LET look. A few other options. We can check out. Here is studio light. This is more as if you're inside. And then you have a few other interesting options like contour light, stage light stays light mono with its monochrome when no colors. And Heikki enlight Mano. Now this is going to give you very different looks depending on what situation you're in, whether you're inside or outside and Whatever your subject is, I happen to prefer natural light to me. It gives the most interesting look, but of course, play around with this and choose what works best for you. Now you will also notice that we have an F symbol. And what that is is your F stop. The f-stop controls the field of depth in the background, which essentially is your Blur. And my scrolling up and down, you can get more or less of a blur in the background. So depending on what look and feel you want, you can play with that to get the, the image that you're looking for. Now, once you've taken a photo, Once you have the image of that utilize, we'll just move it around right here and take this photo and click. What you can do next is go into your photos to find that image. And if you go to the top right, you can edit that image to adjust it as a well, now you have some of the same things we just talked about, plus a few others. Now at the top left is our mode, such as natural light, studio light. And you can switch through these again if you change your mind about what you first took, and that's a pretty handy option to have. Next again is our f-stop. You can change the field of depth of the blurriness if you'd like to in post production. Now, another thing that's interesting, if you've taken a photo and you just don't really like the blurred background. Here at the very top, Russ has portrait. If you click on that, it will revert to the normal image you would have taken in the actual photo mode. And of course you can revert back to your portrait mode. That functions we find here in the edit section are really helpful and will help you get the photo that you're really looking for. So let's scroll down to one of my previous photos that I took when I was out carving pumpkins with my family. And this one was taken also in portrait mode. And again, we can do the same thing. If you click on edit, I can change. The style here goes from different things. This is what it would look like if you're taking photos, outside, fun stuff to play with. But again, I'm choosing more natural light. I can work again with my f-stop or my depth of field and change the blurriness in the background. Of course, the more blurry it is, the more that you're focused image will pop. And if I don't like it, I can just revert back to the normal photo mode by clicking the top button named portrait. In it's grayed out, are in white. And this is what it would normally look like if you took it in photo mode, not portrait mode. But of course, I do enjoy portrait mode and this particular image. So I'll keep this particular one. As you can see, this is a powerful function that your iPhone offers you with photography. And I hope you have as much fun playing around with the portrait mode as I have enjoyed it. Once again, you know what I'm going to say? Go out and practice using these functions. The more you do that, the better you get at it, and the better your photos will turn out and stick around. For the next lesson, we're going to teach you how to edit your photos. So you can go from this to this coming up next. 19. Perfecting Your Photos by Editing: You now have just about everything you need to know about how to take great iPhone photographs plus photography in general. But it doesn't end there. You want to have the skills as well to bring out the hidden beauty in the images that you've captured. And that's where editing comes in with the right software tools and the right skills to use that software. You can bring out these little hidden gems. Make all the difference in the world with your photography that will truly inspire and impress others. So this section will cover some of the editing tools and tricks that will take your photography to the next level, we'll take a look at some free software that you can download and start using today and how to use that software along with specific tools that you probably will never want to go without again. So let's get ready and start doing some photo editing starting in the next video. See you there. 20. Using Tune Image: If you want to get the colors in lighting to really stand out on your photos. Here are a few easy editing techniques that really make your photography using the function called to1 image or an application called snaps he'd, which is a free application by the way, can get amazing results. If you recall, I quickly demonstrated that you can easily go from this photo to this one. Well, you certainly can do this same thing using this application with your photos, just as I've done with these photos here. So in order to proceed with this particular lesson, make sure that you have already downloaded the application called Snap cede. Again, it is free and you might find it easier that you have more than just your iPhone. For this particular lesson. You probably want some other device, for example, another phone, or maybe better yet, another computer to watch this video. Use your best iPhone to go through this application while you follow along with these instructions. So let's take a look. So the first thing you want to do, of course, is open the snap seed application like so. And all you really need to do is, as the screen says, tap anywhere to open a photo. Now what I like to do is instead of having a vertical view, I like to have a horizontal view because most of my photos are horizontally taken. And just click anywhere to open a photo. Now, down here you have open from device, which will open up your camera roll camera, which you can actually take a photo and then open latest image, which is as it seems. So I'm going to open from device. And I'm going to scroll through here and let's go ahead and choose an image of my daughter that have recently taken. Let's go ahead and choose this one right here. Let's try and edit this a little bit. Now what you'll see here are these predefined edits. And there are pretty interesting, but you don't really have any control over them. They sort of just we'll edit for you in whatever predefined combination that they have. Now this is okay to play around with, but like I said, you don't really have any control over it. So I would suggest exiting out of that. And you exit out just by hitting this icon on the top right, which looks like a half circle. What you would do next is in the center on the right, we have a pencil icon, click on that, and you have all of these options. Now, this is such a robust application. We just don't have time to go through everything. But this particular lesson is going to focus on the top-left tune image. So I'm going to click on tune image. And now we have a few more options at the bottom. Now, what we have here if is the automatic adjustment and if I click on this, it'll automatically adjust to where the application believes these are the best settings. However, they're really not. So I don't suggest you use that just to get back to where you were. Click the X button and you're out. So we can go back in by clicking on the pencil and tune image. And we're back in. Now. The icon down here a little bit towards the left. This is the menu too where you can control such things as brightness, contrast, saturation, ambience Highlights, Shadows and warmth. And we're gonna go through all of these together. Now, once you've finished editing, all you need to do is click on the little checkmark at the bottom right. And you've saved your tune image settings. So let's go through these together. In order to access the menu, all you really need to do is use your finger and swipe up and down. And when you choose something like brightness, go left and right. Now, of course you don't want it too dark and you don't want it to, right? Choose something that you feel works best for you because two dark, you're going to lose the highlights, too bright and you're going to lose contrast. So I like it just about the way it is here. I'll give it a slight amount of brightness. Then I'll scroll up to contrast. Now, contrast gives us a difference between the darks and the lights. So if I scroll to the left, have more contrast. And if I scroll to the right, I have less. I prefer images with a bit more contrast because they give just a better overall picture, I believe so. I'm gonna scroll a little to the left and give it a value of, let's say tomb negative 20. I like that. Next, I'll scroll up again to saturation. Saturation really makes the colors pop. So take notice of the sky and take notice of, let's say, My daughter's shoes and the grass in the background. If we scroll to the right, they become more vivid. And if we go to the left, color fades away to black and white. So I like to give it a little more color than normal. I'm going to go up and give it, let's say about a value of plus 20. I'll scroll up again. In from saturation. I'll go to ambience. Ambience is, is, it's really a combination of contrast and saturation. Typically, you increase it but only a little. So if I go to the left, it's less ambience. Ambience depends on how you pronounce it. And to the right, it gives a little bit more. Now as I scroll to the right, notice that the sky gets a little bluer and that the colors get a little nicer. So I'm going to go up and I'll give it a A value of about 30. I'll scroll up a little bit more with highlights. Now highlights and shadows work in more or less together. With highlights. This only affects the brightest parts of the image. This function works well with the shadows function, as I just said. And if you slightly increase highlights just by a little, and then you use shadows to create a little more depth, then you get a more pleasing result to the eye. So I'm going to increase a little bit with the highlight just a little and I'm going to go, let's say up to plus ten. Then I'll go to shadows. And I'm going to go not to the right, but to the left. To the left, we're going to get a little bit more shadow effect. So I'm going to give it the same value of a negative ten. And then from there, we're going to go to the last option which is warmth. And this is pretty interesting. With warmth, either we're going to go more of a blue color, are more of an orange, yellow color. And this is sort of just the way it sounds. As we go toward blew, it looks a little colder. And as we go towards the orange yellow looks a little warmer. Now on this particular day, it was a little cold outside, but a nice bright sunny day. So I'm gonna give it a bit of a warm to value and let's go to a plus ten. Now, what's interesting, after you've set all of these values, what you can do is take a look at the before and after. If you just tap anywhere on the screen and hold it just like this. This is the previous picture. And if you let go, these are the edits you made depending on how extreme you've gone. The before and after can be really different is I'm showing you here the trick is not to make it too extreme. A very common beginner's mistake is to go too far with these edits to where it just doesn't look natural. The idea or let's say the ideal is that when friends and family see your photos, they don't immediately think that the image was edited. Instead, they focus on the photo itself and hopefully are in awe. So I like the minor changes I've made to this particular photo and I'm going to keep them. So once you're happy with your edit, you have a few options to save. Now, as I mentioned earlier, to save you just click on the check, mark it at the bottom right, which I'll do now. And then you click begin at the bottom right, which is more or less to upload. And your options here are at the very top to share and you can send that to someone or send it to your, your social media accounts or your email. You can open in another program. But most people choose the bottom 31 of the bottom three, which is either save. If you save it, that one photo is saved with the changes. However, the second option below is saved as copy. Here you get two photos. Your original stays unedited, and you get a second of the edited version. And the final one is export. The export version does not give you any opportunity to change things. It's permanent, so it's really not the best choice. Personally, what I like to do is choose, save a copy. That way I have both the images and I'll do that now. And there you go. You successfully saved your edited photo and you still have the original. Congratulations. Now you have the ability to edit your photos like a pro. And how many other people do you know who can say the same thing? But we still have more power to unlock with this editing application, which means you have the opportunity to learn a few more skills. So click on the next lesson and let's continue. 21. Enhancing Photos of People: One of the most common subjects in photography is people. We take photos of, friends, family, and of course ourselves. And there are a few other tools in snap, the'd In addition to 2D image that can really enhance the photos of people. So once you have edited a photo of a person, I suggest using these three other tools to really make a difference in your photography. Those include the portrait tool, the brush tool, and the healing tool. So let's grab another photo and start enhancing that photo together. So once again, let's go ahead and open up our snaps heat application and choose a photo. I'm going to choose this photo here of my wife and daughter. And as you might see a theme going on here. Now, what we would do first is do what we did in our previous lesson and go through the steps of editing in to image. I'm going to do that right now and I'll speed up the process. You see what I'm doing, but you don't need to go through the explanation once again. So let's speed up that in 123. Okay, here we are after using tune image. And so we can see the difference between the original and what I've done in tune image is I'm just going to tap on the screen. This is what it looks like with 2D image and this is here, the original. So you notice I've made the colors slightly pop. Remember, we don't want to go too far with things. Now, for the three features on snap C that we wanted to cover today, let's open up the pencil icon and go through all of these here. Now the first thing we want to do is towards the very bottom, and it's the portrait feature. If we click on that, what's going to happen is it's automatically going to make an adjustment. Now what you could do is go through here and choose some options. What's happened is it's automatically chosen combo one. Just so we have more control over the image. Let's go here on the far left and choose none. From there. We can click on this little icon on the left that looks like a person's head. On that. What, what this particular function does is it will change the lightness on people's faces. So notice as I scroll from none right here up to dark, so I'll go here to pale and gets a little lighter. And then fair. It changes the tone. Medium, atone is changed again in dark. We have dark skin to that looks a little strange. So what I'm going to do is go back to where we have more control. Once again, go to nine. I just wanted to show you that so you understood that function. And what we'll do is go into the center here, where you have these three options. But you can do the same. You can choose them just by scrolling up and down. Now, I'm going to choose face spotlight, and I'm going to move this to the right. And before I do that, let's scroll in a little bit so you can see what's going on here. So this is what it would look like without any adjustments. And I'm going to scroll to the right and it brightens it just a tabs I like this brightness. I'm going to Let's go to about 60. From there. We have skin smoothing. I'm going to come in a little further and if you take a look at the skin, I'm going to move it to the right and look how smooth gets all the way to the right. It looks actually on natural. You can do that if you want, but it's not really what I care for. I want somebody looks a little more natural, so I'm gonna smooth it to about 40. Then scroll up again. We have i clarity. I really like this one. Look at my daughter's eyes. We're going to scroll all the way to the right and they get really dollar alike, as you can see with my daughter, I mean, with my wife. And so we're going to make this somewhat a little more natural, not so far up. And let's, let's keep that at this, at a value of 40 as well. And I'll click the check mark. Okay, things look a little bit better here. The second feature I'm going to show you is right here in the center. It's the brush. Now if we click on the Brush, Well, we can essentially do is get rid. Get rid where we can highlight a few areas. I'm going to choose two different areas. And instead of this dodge burn, you can see here on the left or temperature on a ride in saturation. Let's just go over exposure. You can play with the others yourself. So I'm going to click on exposure here. And I'm going to scroll in and show you what happens. If I come down to my wife's hand. Now, I'm going to make the lighting here a little bit brighter and I'm just going to move my finger quickly and smoothly over these areas, starting with the thumb. Now notice this 123, and it just smooths things out and lightens things, attacks it look a little bit better. Okay, so that's pretty good. Now, I want to do the same thing with my wives. The teeth is it's great for teeth getting a little bit clearer and a little lighter. So I'm just going to go a little bit over here and look at that amazing difference. And we'll scroll back out. This is what it looks like before, totally, and this is after what a big difference. Now, thirdly, we're gonna go back in and you have the option of using this Band-Aid. It's the healing function. So I'm going to click on that here. Now, if there if there were any blemishes or discolorations somewhere, this is a great way to get rid of them. And I don't really see any issues. But just for a demonstration and you want to be careful with this because you could make some mistakes fairly easily. There's this little, lets say freckle in the middle of my wife's nose between her two eyes. You could try to get rid of that a little bit just by rushing it out, like so. But as you do that, it could take on other issues. So you gotta be careful with what you're doing. Play around with it a little bit. If you don't like it, you can always click this back arrow and it will reappear and the forward arrow, and it will go back to where you were. Now, let's go back and got it looks like I created a little bit of a blemish to the right. So let's go back and try a little bit in. And there we go. I'll go back. And then for back and Ford, it's up to you what you like most. I'm going to keep this change and click the check mark. Now I have an image that we, that we've used, the tune image plus the three functions we've just gone over. And let's take a look at the before and after. This is what it looks like before. And this is what it looks like after, I think a fantastic change. I'm going to send this to my wife right now. Hopefully, shall I get as much as I do? In order to do that, you gotta click save first. So as usual, click the button, I want to click Save as copy as I explained earlier. And voila, there we go. So from this day forward, you have much more control over your photos in general. And the ability to make the people in your photos, including yourself, look like models are movie stars. And in our next lesson, in addition to people, the second-most commonly photograph's subject is you guessed it food. So see you in the next lesson, coming right up. 22. Enhancing Photos of Food: When was the last time you saw an image of food hosted on either Facebook or Instagram? And when was the last time you you posted something on Facebook or Instagram? Well, if you ever have the next image you post is going to blow away anything you've posted. And before, especially if you use the editing tips we've used so far. In addition, this final editing tool in snaps, he'd called the selective tool. So without further ado, let's go ahead and open up an image of food and do a quick edit. So once again, let's open up our snaps he'd application and choose a photo. And here we go and image of a nice French meal I had not too long ago. Now, instead of going through tune image and everything else, I'm only going to show you one specific tool that can be used for very specific reasons. So we're going to click on the pencil icon as usual. And we're going to click on the left here called selective. What this particular tool does is select a section of the image and you can modify only that section. So let's look at the tomatoes. For example. Let's scroll in and modify the tomatoes specificly. So I'm going to click on the middle or the top right tomato. And notice we've got a little B that pops up. And now if I use my finger and scroll up or down, we have these specific options from brightness, contrast, saturation, and structure. And you can play around with all of these later. But I want to show you specifically saturation because it modifies the color. Now, we're going to increase the intensity of the red in these two tomatoes. And I'll scroll to the right. And it only affects these tomatoes. Look at that. Now, this of course, is too much. So let's look for something that is nice but not overly noticeable. I'll go for a little bit right about here. That's a nice bright red. Now when you finish with one, you want to hit the check mark and you exit, and then you need to repeat the process. So click on the pencil again. Go to selective, scroll in. And I like to modify the green in the broccoli. So I click on an area in the Rockaway right about there. I'll go to saturation again. And I can modify ago really green which is too much or just a little bit. So I'll go up to, let's do a value of, let's do a value of about 40, just pretty green. Now I'm going to click the check mark again. Let's do one more. Let's make the chicken look nice and crispy and just like it's come right out of the oven and you're ready to buy it in. Make it look nice and delicious. Click on the selective tool again. Scroll in by using your two fingers. And I'm going to click right about here. Again. Choose the saturation and scroll up just a little bit. It makes, it looks like a little bit nicer. And click the check mark. And if we hold down, this is our original picture now. And I'm going to release and it's slightly better. Now, these minor adjustments in specific areas can enhance your food images, or for that matter, any other image in really unique and effective ways. So go ahead and play with this function to make your food pictures pop. Great. Now you have the editing tools and skills to make any photo looked fantastic enough to impress your family, friends, and even yourself. And we've just about come to the conclusion of this course on fantastic iPhone photography. But wait, I still have one more thing for you. It's a bonus lesson. I think you might like it. So click on the next lesson and let's check it out. 23. BONUS: Lens Distortions: If you like the Free Application snap seed, and it's editing power. Well, I have one more thing for you when one more free application for you as my bonus gift to you. Now of course, this gift is not from my own creation, it's just my recommendation of something that you download. Again, it's free and it can be the icing on the cake as far as effects go for your photography. That application is called lens distortions, although it does require a purchase to unlock all the features, you really don't need them. All you need are the free features and you can get some pretty interesting results. So let me show you what I mean by using three different photos I have for you. Let's just jump into Xiaowei. So once you've downloaded lens distortions, go ahead and open it up and choose an image. And I'm going to show you three different examples of what you can do. Now, I've got one of my images that we just went over in the previous lesson. And then the second two are professional images, which I found on the internet to help demonstrate. So let's choose the one that we've worked with Jess recently. And unfortunately, we can't go into landscape view, but that's okay. What we'll do is if I scroll across here at the bottom, we have all of these options. Now, we can put in these aligning effects. Now here at the bottom is his LD unlimited and then join. This is if you pay. Now again, I don't really suggest that you do that if you want. Go ahead. I did not. But there are plenty of things like these luminary overlays, which you can put free into your images. And we've got things such as Nature and fog and rain and snow. And let's look at a couple of these to a couple of these together. Let's start off with like now, this light at the bottom right looks somewhat like sun. And in the image, we have the sun coming from the right. So we have an angle and we want to put this knot here at the top left because it wouldn't make sense. It wouldn't look natural. We're going to want to move it, see how we can move it and we can with our two fingers, we can make it smaller and larger. Since the angle is coming from the right, the sun is from the right at a lower angle. Let's put that sign up here. And I like this sort of lens effect that we see that's over, over the top. And if we move it a little bit just like this, it makes a difference. It makes this photo look a little bit unique and interesting to the eye. So this is one lighting effect that you can use with lens distortions. And if you want to save, you just click here at the top right and hit export image here at the bottom. And then there you go, it's saved. Now, let's choose a different image. Let's go back and I'm going to choose, let's do some more lighting. I'm going to choose this interesting image of sugar or a powdered sugar, let's say I'm not sure, being poured over a strawberry yum, looks delicious, but the background is entirely black. Now let's look at the angle where the light is coming from. It's coming from the top, possibly from the top left. Now we can use another light that is not necessarily daylight, looking. Not like the Sun that we previously were using for outdoors effect, but maybe we have a light, either natural or not coming from the left. I'm going to use this light here that seems to be the same color as the actual light in the photo. And look at that, it makes a pretty interesting effect. Again, we can change this here. And not only can we change it here, by moving our two fingers, we have these options. If we click right here, we have more options that we can use. For example, we could change the color, different spectrums as we're doing here. And yet you have this option with everything else. We can use that change saturation, tint, contrast, brightness, for example. All kinds of controls to get the look that you, that you want. Now, this in and of itself looks pretty interesting to me. And again, if you wanted, you can just click the Save button in export. And there you go, you've got a more unique image. And let's go one, let's go into one more image. I'm going to just cancel this one. Okay, let's just get out of that. And here this image is something I downloaded of the streets at night after rainfall. And you can also see there's a person on the right side wearing a jacket so we can tell it's a bit cold. So let's say we still have some rain. We could go to the nature and area here and not fog. Well, let's click on rain. If you want to get a rain effect, click on one of these, you've got several options. Let's just click on maybe this one here and look, it looks like it's raining. You can change the degree. If you don't like that, look, maybe we can get a different one. This one looks a little bit better to me. You can see the background war. But if you want to say, you know, it's, it's cold outside, it's freezing. It's too cold for there to be rain, but the ground is still warm. Let's go to snow. And we got a little bit of a snow effect. And here in a few different effects here that just make the images more interesting. Like so all kinds of different options we can use. I like this one. And we can move it a little bit around and make it work whichever way best fits your style. But again, lens flare has several options for you to use. Some of these might really be interesting and make your photography pop even that much more. So, I suggest playing around with this from here to there to make your images more interesting. And I hope you enjoy this free addition to your application photography collection. So I think it's a great idea to use snap scene on a regular basis for your photography. However, regarding lens distortions and that application, I would reserve that for only the special occasions where it really suits that particular photo. What I mean is don't overuse it because it just won't seem as a natural when people view all of your photography. Nonetheless, the effects on the lens distortions application can really make some impressive photos. And I really hope that you enjoyed this quick lesson on lens distortions in, on these effects. And please join me for our final video coming up next. 24. Until Next Time: You did it. You've taken the time to complete this class and take on a skill set that requires time and effort. For that, I congratulate you. And from this day forward, photography maybe at a level far above your friends and family. Not only that, the joy and satisfaction you may get out of capturing fantastic photos will last a lifetime. And at times you may want to revisit these lessons so that they really sink in and become second nature. Just as a reminder, we've covered several basic principles of photography, such as having a subject, finding the best Angles, Framing and composition, and lighting. We covered the basics of your iPhone, such as how to properly hold the iPhone. The fastest ways to get your camera ready to shoot, getting steady or shots, and exposure in hard light. We then went on to more advanced topics such as the best iPhone settings using burst mode, using HER panoramas, live photos, and the portrait mode. Lastly, we took a look at editing using several features of the snap seed application plus a bonus application called lens distortions. I truly hope you've gotten value out of this course. And as the title states, this is part one of a two-part series. In part two, we will go over more advanced topics which are currently in development. If you have any specific requests for topic ideas, please let me know. I would love to hear them from you. So, ladies and gentlemen, thank you again, and I hope to see you in class soon. Take care and keep honing your photography skills. Goodbye. 25. Class Project: Oh, let's not forget about your class project. It's now time to put your skills into practice with this class project as your assignment. Once you've completed all of our videos, your assignment is to capture and create two photographs. Firstly, the first photograph is a still subject that is not moving. And the second photograph is a moving subject that is in motion. In order to complete this assignment successfully, there are a few requirements for your photographs. Let's go through these right here. And they include, have one clear subject in each photo. Use the rule of thirds in each photo. Do not use the standing adult position angle. Take each photo during golden hour. Edit your photos slightly in snap seed. And it's an option if you'd like to use a lens effect from the lens distortions application. Once you've completed this assignment, please posted here on skill share for others to enjoy and find inspiration for their own photographs. I look forward to seeing what wonderful photography you come up with. Good luck in half. Yeah.