From the course: Photography Foundations: Mobile Photography

Camera orientation

From the course: Photography Foundations: Mobile Photography

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Camera orientation

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- Obviously, as you've seen, to get good results from your phone, or any camera, there are a lot of things you need to know how to do. There are also some things you need to know not to do when you're using any particular camera, and your phone camera makes you prone to some very particular pitfalls and troubles and we're going to look at the most common one right now, which is what you're seeing me do right now, which is to hold the phone like this. This is how we hold the phone, this is how we do things, and because we're in the habit of feeling it in our hand like this it means that most people when they go to take a shot, they frame the shot like this. They shoot in what is called portrait orientation. And so they frame up a shot in a vertical orientation. So I'm just going to grab a portrait of Dom here. And. (camera shutter clicks) That's fine, there's nothing wrong with shooting this way, the thing is you should always make sure to remember that you can also shoot this way, and that a lot of times this might be the better shot. I like this orientation a lot more. Again, if I come back to here, obviously I need to move around a little bit, but I don't know that I need a whole body shot here which is what I'm going to be tempted to do if shooting in portrait orientation. If I come in real close it's just not as interesting as having some space around him, putting some environment around him. I love this detail over here, this weird interface between these two walls. I'm kind of balancing that with this empty space over here. I can't do that in portrait orientation. Dom, can you shift your weight to your other foot? I just need you a little more, there we go, that looks good. (camera shutter clicks) Notice too that as I'm framing him, I'm, for the most part, trying to crop him in the middle of his thigh, not in his knees. It's best when you're shooting portraits of people, if you have to crop them, don't crop them at a joint. So, again, your tendency is going to be to shoot like this because that's how you're used to holding the phone. Most of the time the better framing is going to be landscape orientation, because that's the way we experience the world. We experience the world as a very wide expanse that's not that tall. This doesn't facilitate that very well. So start paying attention to the way you're shooting, maybe take a look through your camera or look at the shots, see if you are biasing towards portrait orientation. If so, then you need to work extra hard to try to break that habit and remember that more often than not this is going to give you the better framing.

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