A Beginners Guide: How To Take Stunning Landscape Photos On An iPhone

Just because you don’t have a big, fancy DSLR camera doesn’t mean you still can’t take some stunning landscape photos. If you understand landscape photography basics and know how to work with your phones camera, you can capture pro-level shots to impress your friends and social media followers!

You don’t even need the newest phone out there, a lot of these tips will work with older camera phones too. Never let the excuse of not having expensive camera equipment stop you from beginning your photography journey.

Tip #1: Understand You Phone’s Camera Settings 

Before you snap that first landscape photo, it’s a good idea to explore your camera’s settings to see what tools are available to use. Did you know some newer phones allow you to manually adjust the shutter speed, ISO, and white balance? 

These are the settings pro photographers use to dial in for the perfect picture. When you know the basics of how these settings affect your photo, using them on your cell phone will help you create more stunning landscape imagery. 

If your phone doesn’t have the ability to adjust these settings, there are apps available to download that have these settings included. These apps also allow you to shoot in RAW format which is a must for editing. 

Newer iPhones like the 12 Max Pro and 13 Pro will shoot in a ProRaw format, however, this is not true RAW but rather a DNG file. Be sure to switch to the RAW format by hitting the RAW button on the camera screen. 

Tip #2: Enable The Grid Setting 

It’s one of the basic rules of photography–the rule of thirds. In short, knowing where to place objects in your composition will improve the quality and balance of a landscape photo. 

Enable these on iPhone by going to Settings>Camera>Grid. The grid will overlay on the camera screen to help you compose your shot and make sure everything is aligned. 

Some quick tips for following the rule of thirds is to have either the ground or the sky take up 2/3’s of your composition and to place objects in the foreground at the point where two lines intersect. 

Tip #3: Place Objects In The Foreground 

Going off of tip #2, adding objects in the foreground will give your pictures more interest and depth. It gives viewers a bit of context by providing a sense of scale to the overall landscape. 

Adding objects like trees, rocks, or animals help pull a viewers attention in and add a little drama to your photos. These foreground element act like leading lines that direct your eyes to the main composition.

This also lets you play around with your depth of field. With touchscreen phones, you can simply tap the screen to have the camera focus on the most important object in the composition. 

While you won’t have quite the dialed in level of quality and control as you would with an actual camera lens, you still have the ability to capture a pretty decent depth of field. Having an object in the foreground will give the camera something to focus on while blurring the background, which can make for a very dynamic picture. 

Tip #4: Keep An Eye To The Sky

When it comes to amazing landscape photos, one of the most interesting (and often overlooked) elements is the sky. As something we see everyday, the sky may slip our mind when thinking about composing a great landscape picture. 

However, it is many time the sky that elevates a simple landscape scene from good to spectacular. Whether it’s a wild formation of clouds or stunning colors on the horizon, keeping an eye to the sky can add a whole other level of interest to your landscape photo. 

With cell phone pictures, it’s best to set your exposure based on the skies light. This way, you’ll keep all the contrast and detail of the sky rather than having ugly blown highlights. 

A good rule of thumb to remember is that you can usually fix underexposed areas in a photo, but not overexposed spots because details in the highlights are completely lost. Set your exposure for the sky, edit for your shadows in post. 

Tip #5: Think About The Light

Lighting conditions can make or break your photo. This is especially true with camera phone photography. 

Every basic landscape photographer should know about the golden hour – the hour after sunrise and the hour before sunset that produces the most dynamic and dramatic light. The same landscape can look completely different as the light changes. 

Midday is usually the worst time to be out picturing with the direct overhead light making a scene look lifeless and flat. As a photographer, you sometimes have to make the commitment to getting up early and staying out late to take advantage of golden hours light to capture that one amazing image. 

If you have the time, definitely try visiting the landscape you’re photographing more than once to experiment with different lighting. Doing this will give you more chances to capture that one truly breathtaking image. 

Tip #6: Understand Your Camera Phones Limitations

Phone cameras will continue to evolve and offer higher resolutions as technology advances. However, they still have their limitations and understanding how far you can push your phones camera will better prepare when snapping an amazing landscape picture. 

The best way to learn your camera phones limits is to research and experiment. Try different lighting scenarios like low light or sunrise photos to see how your specific camera will handle those types of pictures. 

You don’t need to have the newest and greatest iPhone to come away with awesome landscape photos, as long as you understand how to get the best possible picture with the gear that you have. Use your cameras limitations to be creative and try photographing the landscape in a different way. 

Tip #7: Simplify Your Compositions 

A busy, crowded composition makes for an unpleasing landscape picture. To capture the best landscape photos, try simplifying the composition. 

Find the one element that really draws the viewers eye and include negative space to create a balanced image. Maybe it’s just a single tree sitting on the horizon or the lines of a dirt road running through the foreground.

You can also create simplicity by reducing the amount of colors in your scene. Too many different colors can make for a distracting and chaotic image. 

Instead, try to find landscapes with simple, complementing colors that create balance and harmony in your pictures. Not only will it be easier on the eyes but it will draw the viewers attention to the main subject of your photo. 

Tip #8: Use A Tripod

You may think tripods should only be used with a big, heavy duty DSLR camera but you’d be surprise by how effective a tripod can be with a camera phone. Just like with any camera, a tripod provides rock-solid stability against outside elements like wind or the shaking of your hand. 

With a tripod, you’ll take sharper photos and have more time to layout your composition and prepare to take the perfect picture. It also allows you to unlock different techniques like long exposure photography for some seriously cool and dramatic images.   

There are a lot of tripod options you can choose from. They can range from small, flexible models to heavy duty, professional setups. 

If you’re serious about taking the best landscape pictures, investing in a pro-level DSLR tripod will help support your phone in all types of terrain and weather conditions. Just be sure to get the proper phone holder to attach it to the tripod. 

Tip #9: Take Some Panoramic Photos

On most new phones, it’s never been easier to create breathtaking panoramic landscape pictures. A panorama stitches multiple images together resulting in one long photo that’s able to capture vast, sweeping landscapes in a single image. 

Nowadays, most phones have a built in panorama setting you easily switch to. Just tap the shutter button and pan your camera around until you’ve captured the entire landscape.

The phone will seamlessly stitch the photos together into one flawless panoramic image (most of the time). Because it’s made of multiple images, the final photo will be very high quality and pick up many of the little details in the landscape. 

Just be aware that objects in the foreground will get distorted by the wide field of view so it’s best to avoid them all together. Also remember to apply your basic photography principles like the rule of thirds to your panoramic pictures. 

Tip #10: Be Sure To Edit

To really take your pictures to the next level, you must do a little editing. It’s what separates newbie photographers from pro-level ones. 

Editing gives you artistic control over how viewers see your final picture. Composing an image is really only half of the process. 

As the photographer, you can decide how much you want to enhance your photo from its original state by adjusting the lighting, colors, contrast, and more. Do you want a bright, cheerful landscape or a dark, grungy atmosphere? 

Think of photography as a method of storytelling with composing and shooting your image as the rough draft and editing as the revisions before final publication. When taking a landscape picture, you’re not just trying to document the scene as it was,  you're trying to also impart onto the viewer how the landscape made you think and feel. 

There are many photo editing options to choose from that range from free to paid. All phones have basic editing built in where you can adjust the white balance, exposure, etc. 

Apps like Adobe Lightroom Mobile are popular among photographers to push past just basic photo editing settings. However, for those who really want to get serious about their picture editing, exporting the images onto the computer and using the desktop version software will give photographers the most control over the editing process. 

Conclusion

With mobile phone photography continuing to evolve and advance, there’s really no excuse to not begin your landscape photography journey. With these tips, you’ll be sure to impress your friends and family with stunning landscape pictures.