How to Take the Best Photos With Your iPhone

Apple loves their “Shot On iPhone” ad campaign, which makes gorgeous billboards out of photos seemingly shot with one of their regular phones. So why don’t any of your photos look like that?

Well, you don’t need to travel to a desert or the bottom of the ocean to get the best-looking iPhone photos, you just have to know when and how to use the proper modes and settings.

The first (and most obvious) setting to check is your flash. All too often, the flash isn’t on when you’t shooting a picture in a dark room, or it goes off when you’re too close to your subject, resulting in a white blur instead of a photo. By tapping on the lightning icon in the top left, you can toggle the flash on, off, or place it on auto, allowing the phone to decide if the flash is needed or not. In most cases, as long as you have decent lighting, you’ll want to turn the flash off.

Tapping the little up arrow in the top center of the screen will open up other settings you can tweak, like the aspect ratio (which is the shape of your photo: square or rectangle) or the exposure (or brightness). You can also turn on low-light mode or a timer. If you have a model with portrait mode, turn it on to get  the prettiest images, especially of people; portrait mode blurs the background and keeps the main subject of your photo in focus. Make sure you are about eight feet away from your main subject and cycle through the light options in portrait mode to see what works best.

For all these tips and more, check out the video above.