5 tips for capturing the beauty of nature on your mobile

South Australia’s stun­ning nation­al parks are packed full of unique land­scapes and home to a diverse range of flo­ra and fauna.

From the rugged coast­line of Flinders Chase- Kan­ga­roo Island to the sprawl­ing oasis of Munga-Thirri ‑Simp­son Desert and every­where beyond and in between, explor­ing our nation­al parks and cap­tur­ing these moments with pho­tog­ra­phy has become that much eas­i­er with the evo­lu­tion of the mobile phone. 

We chat­ted to Ben Woods, Field Offi­cer for Flows for the Future and all round pho­tog­ra­phy super­star, who gave us these 5 tips will help you make the most of your mobile pho­tog­ra­phy experience. 

1 – Exper­i­ment with your phone features

Take some time to famil­iarise your­self with the fea­tures and tools avail­able on your phone. You can almost guar­an­tee that there is a tuto­r­i­al avail­able for any­thing you want to know specif­i­cal­ly for your brand and mod­el. Your smart­phone is packed with fea­tures that are designed to enhance your pho­tog­ra­phy souse dif­fer­ent set­tings to see what works best for you in var­i­ous environments. 

HDR mode – High Dynam­ic Range (HDR) mode will cap­ture more details in both the shad­ows and high­lights, espe­cial­ly in high con­trast scenes like Belair Nation­al Park. 

Panora­ma mode – Large land­scapes need to be shown big. This mode is per­fect for cap­tur­ing the vast land­scapes of Ikara-Flinders Ranges Nation­al Park

Fil­ters and effects – Try dif­fer­ent fil­ters and effects to add mood to your images. Per­haps a black-and-white con­ver­sion to high­light the tex­ture of some tree bark? 

2 – Composition

Good com­po­si­tion cre­ates an engag­ing and bal­anced pho­to. It’s one of the rea­sons your eyes are drawn to one image over anoth­er. Here are just two tech­niques to remem­ber when cap­tur­ing our nation­al parks’ diverse scenery. 

Rule of thirds – This divides your screen into thirds. Enable the grid fea­ture on your phone and place your sub­ject along the grid lines or at their inter­sec­tions. This tip can make your pho­tos more dynam­ic and visu­al­ly appealing.

Lead­ing lines – Nat­ur­al lines like paths, creeks, and trees guide the view­er’s eye through your pho­to and toward the main sub­ject. Our nation­al parks are a trea­sure trove of lead­ing lines. 

Per­spec­tive – Don’t be afraid to get down low, this empha­sis­es the fore­ground well and the dif­fer­ent view­point draws the view­ers eyes. 

3 – Tap for focus and shoot for highlights

Your smart­phone does a pret­ty good job at judg­ing light and what to focus on, but it’s still a bit of a lucky dip. When lin­ing up the per­fect shot, tap the screen to focus on your sub­ject or point of inter­est, this ensures that every­thing is in focus that should be. This is not real­ly an issue for a sweep­ing land­scape but can be if you have a close point of inter­est in the foreground. 

If you get pro­fi­cient at chang­ing the expo­sure for your cam­era this can be a very use­ful tool. Reduc­ing the expo­sure to bring the detail back in the sky, then using an edit­ing app to bright­en the shad­ows will result in a much more bal­anced image.

4 — Crop and edit, avoid zoom

Edit­ing your images on your smart­phone will save you time com­pared to down­load­ing, stor­ing, and edit­ing on a computer. 

There are many apps that are great for edit­ing your smart phone images and the num­ber one rec­om­mend­ed func­tion is crop­ping. Avoid zoom­ing in when you’re tak­ing your image, it destroys the image qual­i­ty. Instead, use an app to crop your image in post-production. 

Enhanc­ing an image using an edit­ing app is per­fect­ly fine, you can show your cre­ative flair with edits, but you can get a bit car­ried away. Our tip is to keep nature look­ing natural. 

5 – Share with us

We love see­ing our won­der­ful parks and reserves through your eyes, and love see­ing images from our visitor’s lat­est adven­tures. What park will you vis­it next? 

Be sure to tag us @nationalparkssa and use #nation­al­parkssa and don’t for­get to fol­low us for more amaz­ing pho­to inspi­ra­tion from with­in our won­der­ful nation­al parks.