Master Taking Photos on Your Smartphone

Many successful social media accounts share engaging, high-quality images. Sharing photos should catch the eye of your followers and create an opportunity for your practice to tell a story.   

If you are planning on sharing a photo in your practice, whether it’s a happy patient or fun new frames, make the image as visually pleasing and clear as possible. The next time you pick up your smartphone to take a picture follow the tips below: 

• How’s the lighting? Assess the lighting and avoid a flash if you can (this can trigger a red-eye effect.) Make sure your patient or employee is near a strong source of light. 
• Is the photo balanced? Use gridlines to better compose your photo and balance the image. With most smartphones, you can enable the gridline function in the settings of the camera app. 
• Is your subject blurry? Some phones will allow you to tap the subject of your photo to lock on to as the focal point and exposure.¹  
• Make edits. You can utilize free apps like Snapseed or Adobe Lightroom to enhance and brighten photos on your phone. A few small edits can go a very long way.  
• Keep it simple. A minimalistic approach often performs well on channels like Instagram and Facebook. Avoid taking shots that are too busy to keep your imagery clean and simple. 

An image can impact the credibility of your practice. A blurry, low-quality photo may deter a patient, and possibly even spark judgment. Quality versus quantity of photos should always be your focus on your social media channels. 

_{1. Joe Pasteris, “How to Take Better Photos On Your Phone”, REI Blog, 2019. Link here.}