Close-Up

When photographing your close-ups use the following tips:

Find your Light!
Without decent lighting, your close-up subject will be too dark and blurry; with too much direct lighting, the subject will end up blown out you'll lose all that great detail. Find soft, bright, even lighting like in the shade for example.

Don't Get Too Close
iPhones have a fixed lens focal length of 29mm, which means that you can only get so close to an object before it blurs. You don't want to push your phone so close to the object that it starts to blur. Instead, pull back and us the camera zoom to get it close (see video). You can tap on the part of the image you want to focus on.

Avoid Messy Backgrounds
When you shoot close-up, you're intentionally focusing on a foreground object close to you, which means objects in the background are going to be somewhat to heavily blurred. As such, busy backgrounds with multiple colors may still pull the focus away from the object you're taking a photo of, even though they're blurred.

Use a Marco Lens
There are a number of macro lens clips for your phone on the market. They range in price, but I found the cheaper ones are fine for general experimentation. I purchased a $9 kit at Chapters and use that with great results. With a lens clip attached you will need to physically move your camera closer to the subject instead of using the “zooming in” tip described above.

Edit your Image
Smartphones have robust editing function for images. On an iPhone, tap “Edit” on the top right corner to play with exposure, contrast, warmth, shadows etc.

Can’t wait to see your images!