10 Ways To Make Your Outdoor Photos Amazing

Tips and tricks for capturing great shots with your iPhone camera.

- Lesa Snider

Spotting great photo opportunities is a talent in itself, but knowing how to quickly harness your iPhone camera’s built-in features to capture the best shots is an entirely different skill.

Your iPhone is the camera you always have in your hand, but sometimes inspiration fails around the same old point-and-shoot methods.

Sure, there are plenty of ways to enhance your camera with specialized iPhone lenses or tripods, but you don’t really need extra hardware to get great shots. Just sticking with the built-in camera and assorted photo apps can give you some uniquely standout memories. Here are some hints on how to achieve them.

1. SHOOT IN 360-DEGREES

With the rise of 360-degree cameras (go.macworld.com/360cameras), interactive spherical shots are becoming increasingly popular both to view and to create—without spending hundreds of dollars on a dedicated camera.

To capture a 360-degree landscape that you can view on the desktop, via a mobile device, or through a VR viewer, just fire up your Camera app or one of the several 360-degree apps available in the App Store. Facebook’s new 360-degree photo feature automatically converts a conventional panorama shot with the iPhone’s native Camera app into a 360-degree image that viewers can explore directly in their Facebook timeline.

With Google Street View for iOS (go. macworld.com/streetviewios), you get step-by-step instructions on how to create and post a 360-degree image, which you can then upload to Google Maps, your Facebook page, or Google+. Just launch the app and follow the prompts to fill in the required number of panels. The app will stitch a pleasing photo sphere image that you can manipulate with a mouse or finger.