I’m always the girl taking pictures, stopping everything in order to capture that elusive moment. Growing up, my mom was the girl constantly snapping her camera, too. As annoying as it was at times, I’m grateful to have boxes overflowing with photos from my childhood. To her, everything had the potential to be a great photo, and I completely agree. When I look at things, I often see them as images or even little films. I’m not a professional photographer, and I don’t know many of the rules of working my cameras, but I enjoy photography immensely, and I love to play.

We all know what happens when a kind stranger offers to take your photo on the street. You get it back and half your head is cut off, or they got more of the sidewalk in the shot than you. Many people struggle to take interesting photos, but thanks to excellent cameras on our phones, all it takes is a little practice to take decent shots. Here are a few simple tips that will help you take more interesting photos.

Change Perspective

Changing your perspective is one of the best ways to capture something uniquely. It’s easy to assume that you should take photos straight on, with the focal point in the center. However, I like things that look a little off — I don’t want it to look too perfect or staged. For example, when I take pictures of flowers, I like to pretend I’m a bug. How would this flower look to a bee? What does the bottom side of the petals look like? Maybe it’s more interesting than the top? Try different views and see what happens.

Zoom In Close

I usually take pictures on my iPhone because it’s convenient and the camera is excellent. However, typically when you zoom in on a subject on your iPhone, it will become blurry and grainy. If you want a clear, focused image, I don’t recommend zooming. However, if you don’t mind things that look like mistakes, then try it! When photographing flowers, I find a close shot most appealing. Get right up inside the flower! Or if it’s high up in a tree, don’t be afraid to zoom in to get closer. You may like how it turns out.

Play With Depth

Another great thing about the iPhone camera is it really good at capturing depth of field. An easy way to explain depth of field is it’s the area of sharpness in a photo that will remain in focus. You usually get a really nice blur surrounding the focal point. You can play around with this feature on your phone by tapping it or allowing it to grab hold of something in your shot — it will blur the rest. Honestly, people often forget to tap the screen when taking pictures on their iPhones (it has a lot of great features). In this photo above, I tapped the redwood tree in the background, making the fig tree in the front go out of focus. It seems off, but that’s why I like it.

Pretend It’s A Painting

Georgia O’Keeffe is one of my favorite artists. I think of her almost every day! Often it’s when I’m out in nature. I like to imagine how she would see things and how she would paint them. What would be interesting to her? When taking pictures of flowers, I try to envision how they would look painted, giving them a fresh perspective.

Black & White

Black and white edits make every photo look cooler. A great tip is that if you don’t love how a photo turned out, try editing it in black and white. Usually, it looks edgy and professional simply because it’s black and white. There is more depth, more character, and it’s OK for it to look grainy and blurry. Try editing your photos in color and black and white and see which version speaks to the mood you were going for.

Lighting Is Everything

This is an obvious one, but good lighting can make or break a photo. The one exception is if you want it to be dark and moody, but usually, the best pictures are ones that have a nice balance of light in them. If it’s too dark, you may lose richness, but if it’s too bright, it may be too harsh and saturated.  There is a reason so many photographers shoot at that magic sunset hour — it’s because the photos turn out — for lack of a better word — magical. If you’re struggling with lighting with your iPhone camera, try tapping the screen and drag the line to change how bright or dark it is. Sometimes it’s easier to change positions (like get behind, below, or above your subject to change the lighting) or wait until a different time of day.

Embrace The Blur

I adore blurry photos. There is something about them that grabs me. Similar to black and white, a blur makes your photo look cool. You can manually add blur to photos, and sometimes I will play around with that in my edits to see how it looks, but they usually don’t come out as good as the real thing. Try snapping a ton of photos in succession while moving the camera or iPhone around quickly. Usually, I will get a few blurry ones in the mix. Also, because I like grainy, out-of-focus images, I sometimes will take a screenshot from a video I’ve taken with motion. This image of the full moon was from a video I took while in a moving car! You never know what you might get.