Students are using their phones for everything. Digital cameras are pretty much obsolete in our society except for when they’re used in an “aesthetic way”. So, we pretty much take all of our photos on our smartphones. This tutorial explained how to use the rule of thirds, control exposure, use different angles and more. Knowing how to take a good photo on your smartphone is important because you are capturing a moment and want to capture the feeling of the moment. Teaching students the skills to take better photos is important, no doubt they will have to take photos for a school project at some point. The section I found the most valuable was the video explaining the “rule of thirds”. This is a term I had heard before but didn’t fully understand. The tutorial included a small quiz in form of a google form to make sure you were fully prepared to carry on and begin taking photos. Additionally, it walked your through your phone settings to make sure all the right settings were applied.
After getting set up on my phone, I felt ready to go outside and take some pictures. I was excited to test out my camera after making some adjustments in my settings and learning some new information. I played with some different exposures and angles with my muse being a leaf. The first photo in the gallery below shows what it looks like to have the grid setting on, and how the slide option to change the exposure comes up. Can you tell which photos I put the exposure way up or way down?
I chose to use a couple of different leaves as it gave an easy object to focus on and contrasted well with the backgrounds. Emma and I did this photography lesson together, and we found that it was harder than we thought to line up the leaves nicely according to the rule of thirds, but the photos looked much better once the leaves were properly centred. I decided not to edit my photos because I was playing with the exposure during my photo taking and I didn’t want that to get lost. All in all, knowing the fundamentals of taking a good photo with your device is essential for anyone. Specifically, this lesson can also assist in the classroom setting when completing assignments that involve photos. I found another YouTube video that wasn’t in the tutorial that gave some really great and concise tips: