How to Take Stunning Travel Photos with Your iPhone

Taking photographs while travelling is a great way to document your adventures and capture the gorgeous sights you see along the way. While many like to carry bulky DSLRs to guarantee high quality images, others prefer to just stick with their smart phones. Besides, with today’s rapid technological innovation, mobile phones now have superb capabilities for taking great high definition photographs. In fact, you can easily simply rely on your iPhone when travelling if you want to avoid carrying a separate camera around with you. Using your iPhone for pictures also gives you quick easy access to photos if you want to reminisce how wonderful the trip was.

To help you take the most stunning iPhone photos, read our tips to learn more about how to maximise the camera's capability in your phone.

Explore your phone’s camera

Something you might not know about your iPhone is that there are many options for taking photos on the camera. When in your phone’s camera swipe through the different camera options at the bottom of the screen: photo mode (which is the most common and the default), square mode, and pano camera mode (for taking panoramic shots). Discover the different filters by tapping the small three circles overlapping icon in the bottom right. Practice before taking your trip to discover the options you like best.

Read also: 20 Most Scenic Places in the World to Photograph

Follow the rule of thirds

Your phone’s camera has the capability to display a grid. To turn the grid on, go into Settings, scroll down to Photos & Camera, and turn the grid slider on. Rule of thirds is simple; you just need to make sure the most important subjects of your photo (i.e. people or a site you are at) are placed along the gridlines and the intersections of those lines.

Set up focus and exposure

To avoid those blurry photos we all hate, be sure your camera is set up with good focus and exposure. IPhone cameras are set up to automatically do this for you, but it isn’t perfect every time. To set up the focus and exposure when you are taking a picture, simply tap the item that you want to be in focus. It will brighten the exposure and pull that item into focus. Practice by putting different items into focus before you take your shot to see how you want it.

Use an app made for photography

Various apps are available to help you capture awesome photos with your iPhone camera. They are either be available for free or to buy. The Pro HDR X app is popular and recommended among consumers. Features of this app include but are not limited to rear and front display, self-timer, flash options, digital zoom and grid overlay. It also has features to help you edit the photos afterward if they didn’t turn out quite how you wanted them.

Use burst mode for taking action shots

Action shots are hard to get because you can never seem to tap the screen at exactly the right moment. Use burst mode to solve this challenge. To take a burst of photos, point the camera at the subject of the photo and hold the shutter button. The camera will continue taking photos for as long as you are holding the button. To stop, simply let go. All of the pictures will be in your library. This is great for catching shots of people in action – diving into the pool, cliff diving, jumping. When you are finished, look through your photo burst to find and save the perfect shot – or save all of them so you can relive the action moment.

Take these tips and you just might produce the most stunning photographs taken with an iPhone. Aside from having high quality photos for your travel albums, you might even earn something by selling them to magazines or by putting them up on your blog for sale. Get travel insurance prior to the trip to have peace of mind while abroad and travel safe.