Every so often the weather reads the calendar. Saturday's Autumn Spectacular camera phone walk at Chevin Forest Park got the lot: low golden sun pouring through the beeches, fly agarics glowing red in the leaf litter, and a big sky over Wharfedale. The kind of afternoon you'd book in advance if you could.
We were a small, friendly group with a mix of iPhones and Androids. Plenty of chat, a fair bit of laughter, leaves crunching underfoot, and then some stunning light and colour to play with!
The whole point of the walk is that the phone in your pocket is a better camera than most people give it credit for, once you stop fighting it. Here's what we covered:
Tap the lens buttons, don't pinch zoom. Pinching just crops into the photo and throws quality away.
Shoot in your native 4:3 ratio and crop later. Square or 16:9 bins pixels before you've even pressed the button.
Touch the most important thing on the screen. It tells the phone where to focus and how bright to make the picture, and it makes you decide what the photo is actually about.
Hold steady. Camera shake is the biggest quality killer there is, and woods are dark places.
Build the picture from the front. A strong foreground pulls the viewer in; a block of empty grass pushes them out.
Get closer, then take things away. Fewer things in the frame, clearer message.
Explore every angle. Get low, turn the phone upside down so the lens sits on the ground, point it straight up into the canopy.
Use the exposure setting. Around -1 in autumn woods keeps the colour in the leaves and the shape of the sun. Remember to reset it afterwards.
Know your light. Front, side, back, hard, soft, golden: name it before you shoot and the photo half makes itself.
If you fancy the next one, dates for the camera phone walks are here - https://walking.photography/photo-walks-workshops/p/street-travel-photography-84de6
