- Hey everyone, if you're interested in learning
the foundations of food photography,
using only your cell phone, then you're in the right place.
This channel is dedicated to teaching you how
to take food photos so good you can taste them.
(upbeat music)
I'm Leigh Loftus, a food and beverage photographer,
and this video is dedicated
to teaching you how to take photos
that make your friends wanna lick their screen,
using only your cell phone.
If you're into that, subscribe over here,
check in on Tuesdays for our new videos.
If you're really frustrated with seeing your friends photos
that they've taken on their phone
and you just don't know how they've done it,
you don't even know where to start,
by the end of this video,
you'll have five new foundational techniques
to make your photos better.
So, step one is to clean your lens.
So, oftentimes your carrying your lens around,
you set it down, you might have food on it,
or in your pocket it might just get dirt and grime on it,
so just make sure to clean your lens and give it a look,
make sure also there aren't any fingerprints on it.
Step number two are the three different ways
to open your camera.
I really wanna touch on this,
I have a favorite way to do it
because we all go through life,
whether we're in our restaurants,
and we see the perfect moment but we can't catch it
because we can't fumble through our phone
and get to our app quick enough,
or you're with your family and the same thing happens.
My favorite way to open your phone
is literally taking your finger
and sliding from right to left
and you're right in the camera app, no password needed.
So, also from your lock screen,
if you don't have time to unlock it
or it's not recognizing your thumb print
or your face recognition,
you can pull down from the corner and it opens this menu
and you've got your camera button right here,
again, takes you right in.
Lastly, I put my camera app in a location
that I'm familiar with.
So, you're gonna pick this for yourself.
Some people have it here, I have mine in the corner.
You have muscle memory as to where your apps are,
but I recommend putting it somewhere on the home screen
and then leaving it kind of in that location
so that if you have a moment,
where you need to capture something quickly,
you can open the app as fast as you need to.
Technique number three are gonna be
the five shutter release techniques.
The very last one we're not gonna show you today
because it's actually a Bluetooth device.
If you wanna learn more,
just check on our details below.
Obviously, we're very familiar
with the shutter release button, very easy.
A lot of people don't know that either your volume up
or volume down button,
mine's blocked because I have it on a tripod.
You can press that to release the shutter,
not a beautiful shot, but boom,
and then the one below it.
That's very beneficial if you're doing selfies.
So, secondly you see I have my headphones plugged in here.
This is gonna be really great
if you're doing any live action shots with say,
maybe a bartender getting ready to pour a drink.
You can press and hold the volume up
or the volume down button.
Step number four, we're actually gonna go
into our camera settings and turn on the grid,
comment below with the word grid if you already use
the grid to frame your photos.
So, if you don't have your grid turned on,
you're gonna go into your settings,
and you're gonna scroll down quite a bit of a way,
until you get to your camera.
And then I advise turning, that turned it off,
when it's green it's turned on.
And then when you go to your camera, you see these lines.
And this is gonna help you with your framing of your shots
and where you place things.
And we will address the rule of thirds a little bit later,
but it helps tell a better story.
Step number five, I'm gonna review the file format.
iPhone automatically saves the file format as HEIF,
which stands for high efficiency image format.
That's not actually the most compatible with other devices,
so you may have had trouble in sharing
with iPhone to Android.
I would advise switching it over to JPEG,
and JPEG is actually a better quality,
and we're gonna review that in a different video.
So, we're already in your camera settings,
where we were before, and we turned on your grid.
Just at the very bottom of that list you can see formats.
Click Open Formats, and typically,
yours is going to be set on high efficiency,
unless you've already changed it.
And it explains right here what the HEIF stands for.
I go ahead and switch mine, like I said,
to most compatible and it will save as a JPEG.
You now have five foundational techniques
to enhance your smartphone photography.
Subscribe over here,
follow us every Tuesday for our new videos,
and you'll be shooting like a pro in no time.
(upbeat music)