I don’t know about you, but I have a few thousand pictures on my iPhone. Gezzz it drives me silly when I’m searching through all these photos for the perfect one and can’t find it. Some pics are good and some are bad. One thing I know, it just takes time to manage all the photos that we accumulate every week.

So, when I seen a class being offered close to me on iPhone photo training I jumped on it! Not only might I learn something with navigating around on my phone taking a picture, the location of the class would be pretty awesome as well. The class was being offered through the Koreshan State Park located in Fort Myers, Florida. This park itself is beautiful offers many picture perfect settings.

Right out of the shoot I flunked the first thing. Question asked, how many of your cleaned your phone this morning? Out of 12 of us attending the class, only one person passed the question. 🧐

It’s funny how we all make excuses as why we don’t do this task each day. So first things first, one by one we each cleaned our phones and camera lense.

The class was an hour and half so I knew it was best to pay attention and obtain as much as possible. Sure enough we were off and running with our first assignments.

AE/AF with the slider was discussed. While in the camera mode if you hold down on your phone and a yellow box appears! It has a slider bar and from here is where you can regulate the light on your photo. So off to the grounds we were to do a regular photo with the AE/AF and the other one using the yellow box adjusting our own light.

Cool, I was off and running! Next, instructor shared on the subject of LIGHT which is your most important item when snapping a picture. HDR (High Dynamic Range) can make it easy as well. Turning this feature on your camera automatically blends all background and takes all the guess work is out. This too is located in your settings. Take a look at the difference, can you tell the difference?

Learning to use the “grid” makes it easy to line up while taking your photo. This too is located in your settings under camera. Adding that grid just got easier, I already was feeling like a sassy photographer using this mode.

It just kept getting better, all the fun short cuts I was learning while taking in the fun of the class.

Next up was “Composition”. Off we were running again to snap a few pics teaching our eye about composition. Next assignment to take three pictures. One with repetition, one framing and the one capturing curiosity drawing your eye into the picture. Whew this was tougher than thought but here were my choices.

How did I do? The repetition were poles on the fencing, framing was my Santa and for the curiosity I shot down a path trying to entice my audience where it might have went.

Only 30 minutes left in the class we continued to learn the portrait mode and the burst mode.

Portrait blurs the background and make you concentrate on the person in your photo. Burst you can really have some fun with capturing someone or something moving. Remember seeing those kids jump off a diving board and they are caught jumping in air. Well burst is the answer. You take several photos by holding down on your start button and it takes several photos all at once. Check out my two examples.

And finally, how nany of you use Zoom? Well here is the secret on this subject. Rule number one and only one! Use your own two feet and ZOOM WITH YOUR FEET! When you use the zoom on your iphone, it decreases the pixels making your picture cloudy. Walking up to the subject and taking the photograph makes for a better, clear picture and you will be more pleased with.

And lastly, our instructor shared a cool app that we all have on our phones and get this its FREE! Download Snapseed and it will make editing your photos slick and easy!

So there you have it, I hope I was able to give you a few pointers as well and you too can have some fun taking those photos with ever lasting memories.

Now it wouldn’t complete my blog if I didn’t leave you with a little tune to hum along with while your out snapping your own favorite shots. Turn up your speaker and enjoy and don’t forget to clean your lenses. 😉

Kodachrome Paul Simon song ~

AND one more thing and most important ~ just have fun making your memories! Everyday we should be snapping some fun pics ~