With all the technological advancements of today, capturing some precious moments with your camera has become quite easy. The capabilities of smartphones are improving and there are some free apps, photography websites, and e-books. They help you in improving your photography skills to a great extent. In recent times, you don’t really have to be an expert photographer to take some meaningful photos.

There are certain tricks that you can employ to make your snaps Instagram-worthy. Whether you use a DSLR or prefer shooting with your smartphone, these tricks will surely come in handy. Now, let’s take a look at some of these popular photography tricks:

1. Use apps like Camera Awesome to make your smartphone photos look glamorous

Camera Awesome is a photography app that’s available for both iPhone and Android users. It has a timer that’s quite easy to set and enhances photos with the burst feature. The app also lets you set the ISO, exposure, and white balance separately.

The photography apps for smartphones have come a long way over the years. Of course, you can’t get the professional capabilities of a DSLR in smartphones. Despite this, such apps can elevate your simple photos to a new level.

2. Use the ‘Aperture Priority Mode’ to get portraits with out of focus backgrounds

This mode is usually shown with an ‘A’ in your camera app. Aperture Priority provides more control of the depth of the field. However, you must note that the wider apertures have lower numbers and the narrow ones have higher numbers. For example, an F2 will have a wider aperture than an F22.

You can decrease the depth of the field in your photo with a wider aperture. This will help you blur out the background while maintaining focus on your subject.

3. Combine artificial and natural light for ideal night snaps

For taking excellent night shots, you can mix the natural and artificial lights. Time your clicks in such a way that the light levels from artificial and natural sources are the same. This will result in a shot that’s exposed evenly. You can take a spot meter reading from an area of the shot that has good artificial lighting.

You can also take the spot meter reading from the sky. Using these spot metered settings, start shooting when the sky is slightly brighter for the artificially lit part. Continue taking the snaps using the exposures. During a ten-minute window, you’ll have a few shots that are perfectly lit and exposed.

4. Use the burst mode for capturing a wonderful range of motion and expressions

The burst mode is available on most of the DSLRs and digital cameras. On your smartphone, this feature will be available in the camera app. You can use the burst mode to shoot several photos in quick succession. Just hold down the shutter button on your camera and shoot in continuous high speed.

5. Change the direction and angle in panoramic shots

You can simply rotate your smartphone and bring it to the landscape orientation for taking panoramic shots. Pan vertically from high to low or low to high instead of panning horizontally. You can change the direction of panning by simply tapping on the arrow. This will switch its direction. Changing the direction and angle is not at all complicated with the camera apps of smartphones. It’s just that you might’ve not realized this yet.

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Photography was once an arduous process. During the earlier phases of photography, those taking photographs had to handle and master some complicated and heavy equipment. The entire process of photography took several hours to complete. In recent times, it’s a matter of seconds. Today, you just need to take out your smartphone, open the camera app, and tap the virtual button.

In just a few seconds, you’ll have a fantastic photo that you’ve captured. Photography has gone through an amazing, transformative journey over the years. As a result, it now has a rich history and a wonderful present. Now, let’s take a look at some of the astonishing photography facts that you probably were not aware of.

1. Posing and photographing the dead

You’ll find it hard to believe this, but the practice was quite popular during the Victorian era. In those times, life was not easy and death came well before the old age for many. Posing the dead with living members of their family was quite common. It was their own way of creating a memory of the deceased.

On such occasions, photographers often tried their best to make the dead appear as if they were alive. To achieve this, they often employed tricks such as propping up their bodies in positions that were lifelike. This practice fell out of popularity over a period of time.

2. The camera that weighed 900 pounds

Photographer George Lawrence gained massive popularity for the photo of San Francisco that he took after the 1906 earthquake. However, he took a single photograph using a 900-pound camera in 1900. The camera was brought by a rail car and then carried into a field by 15 men. It was a part of the publicity stunt planned by the Chicago & Alton Railway.

The purpose was to photograph the Alton Limited locomotive. You might think that this was an insane stunt, but it was a successful PR initiative. The prints were then sent to the Paris Exposition the same year. They ended up winning the grand prize for their photographic excellence.

3. Hasselblad cameras on the Moon

When the astronauts made their journey to the moon, they took some Hasselblad cameras with them. These cameras were popularly used in those times for clicking the most iconic photos. When they returned with moon rocks for studies, they needed to get rid of the extra weight.

So, they had to leave these cameras behind. They did bring back the film though. If someone brings back those cameras to Earth from the Moon today, they’ll surely become the most prized cameras.

4. The first handheld digital camera

Steve Sasson, who was an engineer in Kodak, invented the first handheld digital camera in 1975. It had a weight of 8 pounds and took images at a resolution of 100×100 pixels. The black and white photo that was produced as a result was recorded on a cassette tape. This whole process took 23 seconds to finish. They could then display the photo on a television.

It’s so unfortunate that Kodak did nothing with this exciting project back then. They feared that the camera would cut into the sales of their films. If only the company had taken this project seriously, the world might’ve been totally different today.

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