Can You Take Good Photos Using a Phone?

So, a few weeks ago my family and I met up in Berlin to watch Poland take on Austria in the Men’s Euro 2024 football tournament. It was a flying visit, landing in to Brandenburg late Friday morning and then heading back to the U.K. just 48 hours later. For these reasons, and the fact that we would be spending most of our time at the Olympiastadion or in a bierhaus, I decided to leave the camera at home with no plans of writing anything up about this trip.

Over the course of the weekend, there were seldom moments where I even felt the need to take a photograph, and if I did, I took out my phone rather haphazardly capturing an image for memory sake more than anything else. Glancing at the photographs on my flight home, as expected my initial thoughts were that none of them were great - and definitely not post worthy! The angles were all skewed, the subjects weren’t clear, and the majority were just blurry at best. It was only until I was sat procrastinating from editing other images weeks later, that I took another scroll through them and realised that some weren’t as bad as I had first thought.

Maybe it’s because the fog has now cleared from my head, but looking back at them, I’m transported back to the day and can feel the emotions and atmosphere again. After all, is that not what a “good” photo does? Tell a story which provokes an emotion or response?

So, can you take good images using your phone’s camera?

I believe so.

Now, of course, if I did have my usual kit with me and if I was planning on taking photos properly then (I would hope) the outcome would be much better. However, it does prove that the “best camera” is the one you have on you, and the one that you actually use. In this case, it was a 12 megapixel camera on the back of an iPhone 11.