10 Tips for Better Travel Photos: Making the Most of Your Smartphone

1. Make the Most of the Golden Hour

The single biggest factor in the quality of a photo is light. Shoot the same place from the same angle and the mood changes completely depending on the light you shoot it in. The time of day photographers love most is the "golden hour" — roughly the hour just after sunrise and just before sunset. The light during this window has a warm orange cast and comes in at a low, sideways angle, so your subject picks up natural highlights and shadows and the whole image takes on a soft, warm feel.

Taking advantage of the golden hour on a trip calls for a little discipline. To catch a sunrise you need to be at your shooting spot 30 minutes before the sun comes up, and for a sunset it helps to start setting up an hour before it goes down. But that small effort turns an ordinary travel snapshot into something worth keeping. Beaches, temples and ancient ruins in particular take on a dramatic quality when shot during the golden hour.

By contrast, harsh midday sun is the least flattering condition for photography. The strong light around noon creates deep shadows and heavy contrast — it casts shadows under people's eyes in portraits and flattens out landscapes. If you have to shoot outdoors at midday, look for shade, or wait for a passing cloud to soften the light before you shoot.

2. Master the Rule of Thirds

The rule of thirds is the most fundamental and one of the most powerful principles of composition. You divide the frame into three columns and three rows for nine cells, then place your main subject not in the center but on one of the four points where the lines intersect. This gives the photo a natural sense of balance and visual tension, and a far more polished feel.

To apply the rule of thirds easily on your phone, turn on the grid feature. On iPhone, go to Settings > Camera and turn on Grid; on Android, enable the guide lines in your camera app's settings. Once the grid is showing, lining your subject up with an intersection becomes much easier.

In landscape photography, place the horizon along the upper third or the lower third of the frame. If the sky is beautiful, give it two thirds and the ground one third; if the ground is the more striking element, give it two thirds and the sky one third. In portraits, aligning the eyes with the upper-third line produces the most natural composition. At first you'll have to consciously check the grid as you shoot, but once it becomes a habit you'll frame good compositions instinctively.

3. Put HDR Mode to Work

HDR (High Dynamic Range) mode is especially effective in scenes with a large gap between bright and dark areas. It shines, for example, when you're shooting the view out a window from indoors, or when you want both a backlit subject and the background to stay sharp. HDR captures several photos at different exposures in an instant and blends them, holding back the highlights and lifting the shadows to produce a picture closer to what your eye actually sees.

Most modern smartphones support Auto HDR. Set HDR to "Auto" in your camera settings and the camera will analyze the scene and apply HDR whenever it's needed. HDR is not well suited to moving subjects, though — motion can blur during the blending process. It works best on static subjects such as landscapes, architecture and still objects, so it's a good idea to turn HDR off for fast-moving scenes.

One situation where HDR is particularly useful on a trip is shooting the interior of a temple or cathedral. When you need to capture both the light streaming through stained glass and the dark interior at once, without HDR the windows blow out to white or the interior falls to black; turn HDR on and detail survives in both areas.

4. Make People Stand Out with Portrait Mode

Portrait mode on modern smartphones softly blurs the background (the bokeh effect) to make your subject stand out. An effect that used to require an expensive DSLR and a fast prime lens is now a single tap away on a phone.

There are a few things to keep in mind to use portrait mode well. First, leave plenty of distance between the subject and the background. The bokeh looks natural when the background is at least 1.5 to 2 meters behind the person. Also stay 1 to 2 meters from your subject when shooting so the outline separates cleanly; get too close and the edges can be rendered unnaturally.

Portrait mode isn't just for people — it also works on food, flowers and small props shot up close. Turn it on when you're photographing a drink at a café or fruit at a market and the surroundings blur beautifully, making the subject pop. Bear in mind that with complex outlines (loose flying hair, the transparent parts of a glass and so on) the AI processing may not be perfect, so get into the habit of checking the result after you shoot.

5. Night Photography: Capturing the City After Dark

A destination at night has a charm completely different from the daytime. Streets glowing with neon signs, ancient temples bathed in light, glittering skylines. But shoot in the dark with a smartphone and photos often come out noisy and blurred. To solve this, modern smartphones include a "Night Mode".

Night mode shoots a long exposure over a few seconds to produce bright, sharp photos even in dark conditions. To get the most from it, the key is to keep the phone as steady as possible while it's shooting. Rest the phone against a railing, wall or table, or use a small phone tripod, and you'll get much sharper results. Setting a self-timer (2 or 3 seconds) also prevents the tiny shake that happens the moment you press the shutter.

Another thing that matters in night photography is making use of the "blue hour" just before it goes fully dark. This is the 30 to 40 minutes after sunset when the sky deepens to a rich blue; because there's still color in the sky, the harmony between the night scene and the sky is at its most beautiful. Once it's completely dark the sky drops to black and can look flat, so aiming for the blue hour is the core strategy.

6. Food Photography: Recording the Flavors of Your Trip

The food you eat while traveling is a precious memory in its own right. Food photos are also among the content that draws the most response when you post to social media. The keys to making food look appetizing in a smartphone photo are natural light and angle.

The best light for food is natural light coming in through a window. Choose a window seat at a restaurant or café and the soft light on the food gives you natural colors and an appetizing shot. Never use the flash — it ruins the texture of the food and creates unnatural shadows. In a dimly lit restaurant, use night mode, or have a friend shine their phone's flashlight from the side, which also works well.

Two angles are especially effective for food. The 45-degree angle brings out the height and three-dimensionality of a dish and looks most natural for a single plate. Shooting straight down (top view / overhead) works well for capturing the whole table and suits abundant spreads with several dishes laid out. Flat foods like pizza, salad or a Korean set meal look particularly good from a top view. Foods with height, on the other hand — a burger, a parfait, a layered dessert — look more appetizing at a 45-degree angle.

7. Shooting Landmarks: Find an Angle Others Miss

Search Google for famous landmarks like the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal or Angkor Wat and millions of photos come up. Shoot from the same spot at the same angle and your picture will look much like everyone else's. To come away with a landmark shot that's your own, you have to find a viewpoint and angle others miss.

Shooting from a low angle — close to the ground, pointing up — makes a building look grander and more dramatic. A high angle looking down from above, by contrast, works well for capturing a city's whole skyline or the pattern of an alley. Rather than shooting a landmark head-on, try the frame-within-a-frame technique too. Using surrounding elements — an archway, a window, a tree branch — as a foreground frame guides the eye naturally toward the landmark while giving the shot a distinctive composition.

Another approach is to use reflections. Photograph a landmark mirrored in a puddle after rain, a scene reflected in a glass building, or a mountain reflected in a lake, and you get a dreamlike image where reality and reflection merge. Set the phone right next to a puddle, low to the ground, and the reflection becomes even more dramatic. If you're traveling in the rainy season, don't miss the reflection shots after the rain.

8. Locals and Street Snaps: Capturing a Living Record of Your Trip

Beautiful scenery is great, but what really conveys the true atmosphere of a place is photos with people in them. A merchant selling goods at a market, a monk praying at a temple, children playing in the street. Scenes like these capture the energy of travel and the local culture best of all.

The most important thing in street snaps is naturalness. To capture everyday moments you have to shoot unobtrusively, so people aren't conscious of the camera. A smartphone has a big advantage here. Point a large DSLR at someone and they tense up, but a phone feels natural and lets you catch everyday moments at ease. Use the zoom to shoot from a comfortable distance and you can capture natural expressions and gestures from a subject who isn't aware of the camera.

If you want a close-up of a person, always ask permission. Ask "May I take your photo?" with a smile and most people will happily agree. A portrait taken with permission captures a livelier expression, and the brief exchange with a local during the shoot becomes a travel memory in itself. Showing them the photo right away can create a shared, joyful moment of smiling together.

9. Selfies: Getting Yourself and the Destination in One Shot

Whether you travel alone or with others, a photo of yourself against the backdrop of a destination is a memory worth keeping. But hold your arm out without a selfie stick and you often end up with a disappointing shot where your face fills the frame and the background is barely visible.

The first way to raise the quality of a selfie is to use the rear camera instead of the front camera. The rear camera has far better image quality than the front one and a wider angle that captures more of the background. Set a self-timer for 3 to 5 seconds, rest the phone against something nearby or use a small tripod, and you can capture a natural full-length shot that looks like a professional took it.

The second way is to use the ultra-wide lens. Shoot a selfie with the 0.5x ultra-wide lens on most modern smartphones and the background is captured far more expansively. Bear in mind that the ultra-wide lens distorts the edges, so place your face in the center of the frame and compose so the background falls to the outer areas. Also, when you ask another tourist to take a photo, show them the composition you want set up on the screen first and your chance of a failed shot drops sharply.

10. Raise the Polish with Editing Apps

Even a well-shot photo reaches a higher level of quality after some post-processing. Professional photographers always go through an editing step after shooting. Professional-grade editing is possible on smartphone apps too, and a few taps can completely transform the mood of a photo.

Recommended Editing Apps

• Snapseed (free): A powerful editing app made by Google. It offers professional features for free — from basic adjustments like brightness, contrast and saturation to selective edits, perspective correction and HDR effects. With its intuitive interface, even beginners can use it easily, which makes it the app we recommend most.
• Lightroom Mobile (free / subscription): The mobile version of Adobe's professional photo editing tool. You can apply presets (filters) to create a series of photos with a consistent color palette, and it supports RAW file editing too. If you want to give your travel photos a unified mood, it's the ideal tool.
• VSCO (free / subscription): An app famous for its tasteful film-look filters. Apply a single filter and a photo transforms into something with atmosphere; it has many filters that suit landscape and portrait photography especially well.
• Built-in camera app editing: The default photos apps on both iPhone and Android have surprisingly powerful editing built in. Without installing a separate app you can adjust brightness, saturation, warmth and sharpness.

Basic Principles of Editing

The most common mistake in post-processing is over-editing. Push the saturation too high and colors turn unnaturally garish; crank the sharpness too far and the noise gets worse. The key to editing is drawing out a photo's potential while keeping it natural. As a rule, lifting the brightness a little, raising the contrast slightly and increasing the saturation by about 10 to 15% brings most travel photos to life. Cropping alone — trimming away unnecessary edges — also improves the composition dramatically in many cases.

Photography Etiquette by Country

When taking travel photos, it's very important to respect local culture and rules. Attitudes and regulations around photography differ from country to country, so knowing them in advance helps you avoid unpleasant situations.

• Thailand: At places connected to the royal family and at temples, shoot with a reverent attitude. Posing with your back to a Buddha statue or pointing at one is considered extremely rude. Always ask permission before photographing a monk.
• Japan: Photography in public places is generally free, but taking a head-on photo of a stranger's face on the street is considered impolite. At temples and shrines, always check for no-photography signs. Photographing a geisha without permission in a geisha district is prohibited.
• Europe: You can shoot freely in most public places, but some museums and galleries prohibit interior photography or restrict flash use. Check the photography rules when you enter.
• The Middle East: Photographing women without permission is a serious offense. Photography near military installations and government buildings is also often prohibited, so caution is needed.
• India: At heritage sites and museums there is sometimes a separate camera admission fee. When photographing locals, be especially careful not to take pictures of children without consent.

Cloud Backup: Keeping Your Precious Photos Safe

One of the most heartbreaking experiences on a trip is losing all your travel photos to a lost or broken phone. To prevent this misfortune, be sure to set up automatic cloud backup.

Turn on the automatic backup feature in Google Photos or iCloud and every photo you take uploads to the cloud automatically whenever you're connected to Wi-Fi. Get back to your accommodation and connect to Wi-Fi and all the photos you took that day are safely backed up. If you're worried about data charges, choose the "back up over Wi-Fi only" option.

As an extra safety measure, we recommend backing up important photos to a second cloud service as well. Use Google Photos together with another cloud service or Dropbox and if something goes wrong with one, you can recover from the other. Also, sorting through the day's photos at your accommodation each evening and deleting the ones you don't need saves storage space and makes organizing your photos after the trip much easier.

In Closing: The Best Camera Is the One in Your Hand Now

There's a famous line from professional photographer Chase Jarvis: "The best camera is the one that's with you." No matter how expensive a DSLR you own, it's useless if it stays in your bag and you never take it out. The smartphone always in your hand is the best tool there is for recording every moment of a trip.

You don't have to apply all 10 tips in this article at once. Make just two of them a habit — the rule of thirds and using the golden hour — and the quality of your travel photos will change noticeably. Try the rest one at a time and build up your own shooting style. Experiencing the trip matters most, and photos are the means to hold on to that experience for a long time. Rather than fixating on the camera, enjoy the moment, and now and then take out your phone to record it — that's the most ideal habit for travel photography.

Plan your trip with myTravel and check the best shooting times and weather for each attraction. Arrange your key attractions to line up with the golden hour and you'll have a tailored itinerary that lets you come away with your best shots.