HOW TO TAKE GREAT PHOTOS ON YOUR MOBILE PHONE

Good day, my friend,

Photography may seem daunting to most, but it isn't exactly rocket science. Whether you're a serious hobbyist with a DSLR, a mirrorless camera, a digital compact, or a camera phone — it's still a camera. The secret, and the joy, lies in how you use it.

Before we get technical, you must first understand how light works. Observe and study the light where you're sitting right now. Do you see the shadows, the reflections, or even feel the mood of the electrical lighting around you?

Once you train your eye to see and appreciate how light magically transforms a person's face, a living room, or a street scene, you'll start capturing amazing frames of art.

When I joined The Star daily newspaper in 1992 as a Cadet Photographer, I thought I already had the skills to be a professional. That's when my real journey of learning began. I'm grateful to the seniors there who taught me everything about light, focus points, and lenses — the tools needed to create the best shots for the nation's readers.

Unfortunately, I can't show you any of my best photos from my days as a press photographer; many were filed away in the library. I often wonder what happened to those black-and-white prints and later on - colour prints.

Those were wonderful memories. In fact, most pros will tell you that black-and-white photography is the best way to start — from shooting on black-and-white film, to developing the roll, to finally printing the shots in various sizes.

Pure magic.

Sadly, it's been years since I sold my last manual film camera, a 35mm Nikon FM-2. If my memory serves me well, my first SLR camera was a Yashica FX-3 Super 2000, bought for me by my mother at Sungei Wang Plaza when I began my graphic design studies at the Malaysian Institute of Art (MIA) in 1988.

Links: 

https://www.imagingpixel.com/p/yashica-fx3-super-2000.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikon_FM2

I can't describe the joy that took root in my soul the day I developed my first roll of film in the dark room at MIA in Taman Melawati — watching an image appear for the first time on 5R black-and-white photo paper, floating up in the washing tray.

I dare say my photos were purer and more artistic back then. Evolving from student photographer to press photographer, photojournalist, and commercial studio photographer shaped the way I frame every shot to this day. 

Links: 

https://www.prospects.ac.uk/job-profiles/press-photographer/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photojournalism

Boy, oh boy — it just dawned on me that I've shot millions of frames since.

Rather than get too technical (there are plenty of great photography tips from my fellow colleagues online), here are some images taken mostly on a camera phone over the years. Take a look at how I cropped and filtered each one. Some are clean and not altered images.

By the way, we used to call it "Photoshop" — these days, it's just "filters."

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