Hill walking Photography tips: How to take good photos on your smartphone
By George Minton 
Hill walking Photography tips: How to take good photos on your smartphone
George Minton, from CamerAseals.com shares his top tips on how to take good hill walking photos on your smartphone. Read on to find out more.
Everyone loves to travel! It gives people time to relax and, at the same time, gives them an opportunity to meet new people and explore amazing places. This is the reason why everyone never fails to bring their camera with them, to ensure they’ll document their whole experience.
But there are times that you wanted to pack light because of the activities you’re about to do on the trip like hill walking. Unfortunately, you can’t do that because of your camera gear.
If you’re a professional travel photographer, you possibly know how to pack for this kind of situation. But if you’re a simple traveller who just loves to document your experience, bring your smartphone instead as it’ll do wonders as well.
Smartphone’s resolution may not be high compared to professional cameras, but it still can produce good quality images. Or produce even more if you know some tricks on how to take good photos using your smartphone.
If you don’t know any tricks, we can help you! In this article, we’ll give you hill walking photography tips on how to take good photos on your smartphone.
How to take good hill walking photos on your smartphone
1. Capture your outdoor activities through panoramic shots
When you’re doing an outdoor activity such as hill walking, the first thing you could wish for is, having a camera that could capture every single part of the scenery.
With today’s technology, your wish becomes a reality because most smartphones’ cameras have a panorama mode. The panorama mode works by shooting multiple images then stitch them all together to create one wide angle shots.
2. Look out for leading lines
In hill walking, you probably encounter lots of pathways or roads. This is a good opportunity for you to practice using the technique called leading lines.
Leading lines is an effective technique of composition to guide people’s attention from one element to another of a certain image. A pathway is a good example of this because when we look at it we usually start from the bottom of the frame, all the way up.
It’s not necessary to be a straight line. You can also use curves or straight lines in horizontal or vertical position to make it look more compelling.
3. Always focus manually
Just like in professional cameras, when using smartphones in photography you should always set it on manual focusing. Though there’s no problem with auto mode, it’s easy and simple to use. But manual focusing offers more flexibility.
In smartphones, setting the focus manually is easier compared to professional cameras. All you need to do is tap the area of the screen where you want it to focus on.
4. Try burst mode to capture fast moving subjects
One good thing about outdoor activities such as hill walking is the opportunity to come across with different interesting subjects. Some of these interesting subjects are: horses racing to one another or bears catching their fish.
When you encounter any fast-moving subjects, it’s best to use the burst mode of your smartphone’s camera setting. The burst mode will continuously take multiple photos of your subject per second. This is a good guarantee that you’ll capture all the action.
Enabling the burst mode depends on your smartphone’s model or brand, but for most, you can enable it by hold pressing the shutter button and stop it by releasing your hold.
5. Find a steady support
The usual problems we encounter on cameras are the unintended shakes. Smartphones are not an exemption to that. So, it’s ideal to find a way or tools to help it get steady.
If you prefer to use tools in steadying your smartphone, you can use a monopod and a remote shutter control. But if you don’t want an added weight on your bags, you can do it manually. This is by holding your camera with both hands and uses the volume buttons as the shutter button.
6. Make the most of natural (or artificial) light
Another advantage of shooting in outdoors, you have tons of light sources. So you don’t have to bring lots of equipment just to create a remarkable photo. The only downside of it, you can’t adjust it.
But it’s not a big deal because there’s a lot of ways on how to use the sunlight to your advantage such as:
• Find an open shade
When the sunlight is at its peak or directly above your head, it will create a harsh shadow on your subject’s face. To avoid that, it’s best to find an open shade, like a tree, and the main direction of the light.
The shade will protect your subject from harsh light; while finding the main direction of light will serve as a guide on where’s the best position to shoot.
• Utilize the ‘Golden Hour’
‘Golden hour’ refers to the hour just before sunset. If you’re going to shoot at this hour, it’s best to do it with direct sunlight. This is because the light is much softer, creating an elegant golden glow on your subjects’ faces and background.
Thanks to George for submitting his guest post, if you’re a Mud and Routes fan maybe you’d like to feature by sharing your tips, your own gear review or even a walking route.
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