People who don't really care about taking photos on their phones and leave everything to automatic can try at least one simple technique that can fundamentally change the resulting photo. Just touch the display while taking a photo - a single touch can completely change the atmosphere of the image.
If you don't have exposure locked, then when you refocus – that is, when you touch a certain part of the image – the exposure will also change automatically. In other words, the phone will adjust the brightness of the entire photo based on where you tap. If, as in the case of the sample photos in the gallery, you don't care about the exact focus point, you can change the atmosphere of the photo by simply touching different places on the screen. However, when you need a specific object to be sharp, it is recommended to first adjust the exposure, then lock it (most phones allow this by long-pressing the screen) and only then refocus as needed.
A typical example is taking panoramic photos – for example, of a city landscape. You can change the atmosphere of such a photo by focusing on the bright sky or, conversely, on the dark buildings. The phone will automatically adjust the exposure accordingly, and the photo will look completely different each time. In the gallery below, you can see two photos of the Empire State Building. Although they were taken a few seconds apart, each has a completely different atmosphere – one evokes the so-called “golden hour”, while the other feels like a night shot. The only thing I changed was where I tapped on the screen: once on the brightest spot – the illuminated tip of the Empire State Building – and the second time on the darkest block at 5th Avenue.
Gallery
