Iphone Photography Tips: 5 Tricks To Capture Landscapes

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I like shooting landscapes, so many of the tips I am sharing with you here cross from that which I use with my Nikon D850 when I'm out searching for that next amazing shot...

As you can see, I take a lot of photos!

Over the years I've taken many, many more photographs than that, a fantastic part of that was taken with my smartphone.

Here's a couple of tips I've learned along the way that can allow you to get all of the juice you can out of your phone to take better landscape photographs.

Landscapes Are All About Moving Wide
Out of the box, my iPhone X isn't bad in the camera and lens sections.

The challenge, then, would be to discover the ideal lenses to utilize your iPhone.

I've tested many iPhone lenses through the years, and the majority of them have experienced lousy optics, requiring enormous cases to attach to the telephone or both.

Recently, though, I received my hands on a set of iPhone lenses out of Sandmarc, and, well, they've certainly got me over!

A couple of things straight out of the gate has really impressed me.

First, the grade of the lenses ...
... is second-to-none.

The wide-angle lens provides you 2x the field of view, too, so that you can add more of those gorgeous landscapes into one shot.

Secondly, the lens has a low-profile case, so you don't feel like you're carrying around a brick telephone using a bulky and awkward case that gets on your way.

In reality, not only in the event the world's thinnest lens instance mount, but you can also just clip the lens onto your phone in the event that you currently have a situation or don't need an instance in any way.

The only bummer is that the situation has been a bear to eliminate my cell phone.

But after speaking with the fine folks at Sandmarc, I have been confident that in a few weeks, a new situation is going to be released that addresses that issue.

As an aside, I understand that the sunlight is blown out in the previous two images, but in my defence, I was just taking a couple of quick snaps to show the difference in the angle of view while I set up my gear for a very long exposure later that day.

You can observe that shot over, which, lucky for me, occurred to include a man skimboarding in the foreground!

You Want the Right Apps
Having the right apps on your mobile can make the difference between your photo being a success or a flop.

And I don't just mean post-processing apps, possibly...

These days, there is a program for just about everything. Here is a couple of my favourites.

As I mentioned earlier, I moved to the beach to snag a very long exposure shot of the sunset, and to make sure I had been there at the right time, I used the MySunset program (available for iOS and Android devices).

This app gives you a five-day prediction for the sunrise and sunset, including an analysis of how good the sunset will be.

To put it differently, the lower the amount displayed on the program (i.e., 58%, as shown in the green box at the upper-left region of the screenshot above), the colourful the sunset will be.

Conversely, the greater the amount, the greater the odds that you'll have colour-filled skies to function as a background for your landscape photos.

My Tide Times is just another program that I use a lot so I am guaranteed to plan my own photo-taking experiences just right.

With a detailed prediction of the tides, My Tide Times lets you pinpoint a place and get precise times for the wave coming in and moving out.

It will even tell you how high (or low) the wave will be so you can plan your shoot safely.

It is available for iOS and Android devices.

One of the very best photo-editing apps out there is VSCO.

And if you recognize the title, it's because VSCO has existed forever, but back in the day, it was a film that they created.

Their expertise with film photography led to the evolution of a package of filters you can apply to your landscapes that provide them with all kinds of appearances, from bright, clean, and easy to black and gritty.

The program includes camera controllers as well, which let you make manual adjustments to exposure settings, shoot in RAW or HDR, plus much more.

Utilize a Polarizer
I know it may sound crazy to use a polarizer with an iPhone, but trust me, it could be accomplished!

I analyzed their polarizer out, and it worked like a charm.

I noticed that an increase in the contrast of the skies and clouds, less glare off the sea surface, and not as atmospheric haze, too.

The grade of the filter is top-notch as well.

My only complaint is that the filter isn't compatible with the Sandmarc wide-angle lens, so to use it, I had to remove my wide-angle lens and go together with the iPhone's native lens.

But, if you ask me, that's a small price to pay for getting better landscape photos using this useful polarizer!

Find Ways to Insert
Among the troubles that you encounter as a landscape photographer is conveying the depth, you see with your eyes in the photographs you require.

However, there are numerous tricks you can use to provide your landscapes that required depth, including top lines.

As you can see in the photo above, the lines created by the roadway help to move your eye from the foreground to the midground to the backdrop.

That movement allows you to inspect every"layer" of this shooter, thus giving it the impression of being three-dimensional.

Another popular trick you can use to create depth is to frame the primary topic in some manner.

As shown in the picture above, by composing the shot such that the landscape is viewed through the rock formation, we now get a feeling of the spatial relationship of these elements in the shot. In other words, we've got a better understanding of how far away the desktop elements may be from those in the foreground.

Employing a frame in a frame is also a useful trick if you would like to create a more romantic look in the landscape, or even in the event that you would like to crop unwanted elements out of this shot.

Locate Shadows
If you shoot during Golden Hour, then you will find beautifully long shadows cast by the sunlight.

These shadows not only give your smartphone photographs
enhanced dynamic selection, but they also help create more visual attention in the photo.

There are various strategies to incorporate shadows in your shots, too.

As noticed above, you can just use shadows to highlight a texture or pattern, as you see in the sand dunes.

But you may also use shadows to make a little puzzle with silhouetted figures, as the photo above demonstrates.

This gives you a bit more creative freedom for making gorgeous photos, and in the case of the shot, also, it enables you to include a person from the picture.

People and landscapes are excellent complementary subject matter, so if you've got a chance to include a person on your photos, take action!