How to Make Perfect Smartphone Photo Gifts

This could just be the saviour of your season. If your smartphone is brimming with snapshots of good times spent with friends and family, and you’re now looking for prezzies for those people, here’s a great way to save your day. We’ve put together a few simple yet effective pieces of advice for you to create stand-out photo gifts.

Photo gifts tend to be very well appreciated with friends and family, but what makes a great photo gift? You can browse your phone for fun shots or take new images for the occasion, everything from a well taken selfie to a picture of your gran’s cat is ligit. It doesn’t really matter whether you take your photos with a super expensive smartphone or DSLR, a few simple guidelines will help you get it right. Check out our 7 ways to photo heaven:

7 Super Astute Photo Tips

• This may seem like a straightforward one, but it’s the most important advice we can offer. It’s vital to bring out the most important parts of the photo as good as you can, and cropping the photo after you take it will do just that. Simple: just crop out everything that doesn’t need to be in the picture.
• Look for the right background. It shouldn’t be too busy, and there shouldn’t be any objects in there that distract from your subject. A blue sky, nice landscape or even a red brick wall will do give you a nice contrast to the peeps in the pic.
• Talking about blue skies: daylight images work much better than night shots, particularly when taken outdoors. Available light situations inside are tricky since the light is usually never good enough to get shots without blur, and photos with flash tend to cast a harsh light on people’s faces.
• Image composition and perspective: the subject doesn’t need to be bang in the middle of the shot. Our brains work in a way that – if you place a person or object in the right half of the picture – we tend to find it more appealing. A lot of pictures turn out better when you change the perspective as well. No harm getting on your knees to get the perfect shot, just concentrate on framing what you really want to see in the picture.
• When taking pictures of people, make them smile. The best pics are the ones where people produce a natural smile, so try and be as relaxed with them as possible. Say something silly to crack them up, it’ll help!
• People Love their pets. If e.g. your gran has a dog, then a mug adorned with doggy’s face will in all likelihood rock her world. When taking pictures of animals, be sure to frame their faces nicely.
• Take heaps of pics. You can always get rid of those you don’t like later. Be as trigger happy as you like – the more pictures to choose from, the better.

Once you’ve taken or cropped the perfect pic, you can play around with the photo filters in your camera or computer software to bring out the best of the picture. We’ll soon have a separate blog post in which we’ll introduce a few simple editing tips.

Have you ever personalised gifts with photos? How were they received? Please leave your comments below and share your experience with us.