If you are a photography enthusiast, you’ve probably seen countless Flickr and Instagram accounts filled with professional looking photos taken with a digital camera. While there’s no beating a several thousand dollar DSLR, you can still take incredibly high-quality portraits with the camera in your iPhone. Getting a stunning photo will take a bit more than just pointing and shooting, or tapping in this case, but there are a number of fairly portrait photography tips to help you take your photos to the next level.

The iPhone Camera App

One of the first things that you should do is get used to the options and controls on your iPhone camera. Even if you are just using the app that comes with your phone, there are a number of handy features that can make a huge difference in the quality of the portraits you take. Going to the options menu enables you to change saturation, contrast and even set up grid lines. You are also able to save profiles, so if you find yourself shooting in particular locations or environments on a regular basis, you can save your settings instead of having to manually adjust each time.

You also have the abilityto change your camera’s focus, which in most situations should be your subject’s eyes, by simply tapping the area on your screen you want to focus on. While you can also zoom in with the camera, be wary of using this particular tool because it tends to lead to major degradation in picture quality.

The Rule of Thirds

The rule of thirds does not just apply to portrait photography tips; it can make a huge difference in all types of photos. When you go to the options menu on your iPhone camera, you’ll be able to tum on grid lines, as mentioned above. When you do this, you should see a grid that divides your screen into nine equal sections with three horizontal and three vertical lines. Generally speaking, the focus of your photo should end up at the intersection of these lines. Specifically for portraits, it is normally suggested that the subject’s eyes end up on a horizontal line or if the photo is not taken straight on. that one of the subject’s eyes end up at the intersection of these lines.

Lighting

Lighting and color can often make or break a photo, and while the iPhone camera is rather high quality, it struggles to interpret lighting correctly, especially indoors. This is an issue that is common for digital cameras in general, not a failing of the iPhone’s camera. One of the main problems with indoor photos is that there are normally a variety of light sources in varying hues, such as sunlight, fluorescent light and standard yellow cast light bulbs. You could use your camera’s flash, but red eyes, strange highlights and washed out colors are common results of doing so.

There are a few ways to get around this, one of the simplest being to place your subject near a window when taking their photo. Alternatively, you could use a direct light source, such as a desk lamp pointed at your subject’s face. Whatever you do, try to avoid taking backlit photos indoors because doing so exacerbates all of the worst problems associated with lighting and digital cameras.

Outside photos are generally easier to deal with, even in low lighting situations, because you’re usually only dealing with one light source. The only downside is that even on a sunny day, shadows you don’t want may end up in the photo. To deal with this, you can either have your subject look up at a slight angle or use a reflector.

Burst Shots or Continuous Shooting Mode

There are some widely differing opinions on the use of continuous shooting mode for portraits. The benefits of doing so are the ability to get more natural and relaxed portraits because subjects do not have to pose or smile for the camera, something that often leads to a rictus grin. On the other hand, having the camera take multiple shoots in a space of a few seconds may lower the overall quality of the photo because you are not able to manually focus the camera. At the end of the day, they are your photos, so you should do what provides the results you are happiest with.

Filters and Apps

Unless you’ve been living in a cave under a rock, you’ve probably heard of Instagram, but it is far from the only app available to improve and edit your photos with. Some of the best include Camera +, an alternative to the app built into your phone, along with Photo Editor by Aviary and Photoshop Touch, which are excellent editors for improving lighting, editing out blemishes and fixing saturation and color balance.

Whether you use an editor or not, it is generally best to take the largest and highest resolution photos possible and save your raw images. File sizes are much larger, but it is far easier to deal with a large image and scale it down than to attempt the reverse. Additionally, if you intend to use your portraits in a print medium, higher resolution is a must.