Do’s and don’ts for taking photographs with your smartphone or camera

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There is a very useful article by Bambi Cash and Blake Carver on pages 12 to 15 of the June 2025 issue of the Toastmaster magazine titled How to Take Great Photos: The do’s and don’ts of taking great photographs. It has sections with advice on:

 

Club or Large Group Shots

Smaller Groups

Hand Gestures [not in the pdf version of this issue]

Speakers and Presenters

Background

Lighting

Selfies

 

There also are Photo Tips from Professionals, and under Background they advise:

 

DON’T: Have people stand in front of a cluttered or confusing background.

DO: Pose them in front of a solid background so the focus is on their faces.

 

But they missed a simple tip - making sure to briefly check ypur recorded image for unintended background effects. What you see may NOT be exactly what you will get. It’s often called the tree growing out of the head problem. (Indoors you instead might get a flagpole). 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Your viewfinder image may have the lens aperture wide open, which results in a small depth of field, as is shown above. Then the recorded image has the aperture stopped down, which results in a larger depth of field (also shown). An iPhone support article titled Use Portrait mode on your iPhone says that:

 

“With Portrait mode, the camera creates a depth-of-field effect. This lets you capture photos with a sharp focus on the subject and a blurred background.”

 

There also is an interesting web only article by Biju Arayakkeel in the October 2020 Toastmaster magazine titled 10 Storytelling Lessons from Photography.

 

The smartphone cartoon came from OpenClipArt.