Phone Photography Class with Three and Samsung

Last weekend I was invited by the mobile network Three to join a photography class they were holding in Manchester City Centre. Myself and a group of other local bloggers were each given a Samsung Galaxy S6 for the day and our tutor Aidan O'Rourke showed us how to make the most of a phone camera's settings.

Read on to see more of my photos from the day and the tips I took away to hopefully improve my photos for Asian Fashion Blog!

1. It's all about lighting

This one might seem really obvious to most people, but I think I often get the lighting wrong in my photos, particularly my indoor photos. Working full-time in addition to blogging, my photos usually get taken in the evenings and my flat has spotlights which create shadows in some places and too much shine on my sparkly outfits in others!

Here's an example of an outfit photo with the shadows, plus reflection on my glasses!

Be patient, it takes time to get the perfect shot

I really don't spend enough time taking  my photos. For catwalk shows I know I can usually get photos from the official photographers, but for everything else I do tend to rush a little. I'm not patient enough to follow through and I do end up with hastily-taken, sometimes out-of-focus photos in my camera roll.

I will be trying to take my time a bit more and I think for photos of jewellery or accessories this will be easy to do, but when it comes to taking photos of myself, even though I've been blogging for a very long time, I still a feel a bit self conscious.

Even though nowadays, everyone is taking photos of themselves for social media, I don't always want to be that  person who's taking 100 different variations of the same picture. There is also the argument to say that if you're too busy taking photos at an event then you're not really enjoying the moment.

This was the best selfie out of about 10 from the Fashion Parade 2015 event. I wish I was smiling in it more!

Speaking of selfies, the Samsung Galaxy S6 has a "beauty" option which makes your skin all smooth! There was some debate about this among the other bloggers and how if you have the "beauty" setting too high, you can end up looking a bit fake and plastic!

Photos from the class

#picperfectwiththree spending my afternoon taking photos in the Northern Quarter on the Samsung S6 with Three! #northernquarter #manchester #streetphotography #samsung @ziferblatedgest

A photo posted by Nazma (@nazma_afb) on Aug 15, 2015 at 9:14am PDT

Here's my favourite photo from the class with Aidan, as well a taking some photos of the interiors at Ziferblat, we also walked around the Northern Quarter in Manchester in search of some inspiring street art to photograph.

This photo was all about straight lines for me, from the lines in the design on the shutter, to the square extractor fan above and even the yellow line you can see on the pavement.

Before attending the class, I attempted to take some pictures of a very sparkly jewellery set from Kyles Collection, my photos didn't come out very well and I didn't use them, however after the class I tried again and you can see the difference background and lighting has made to the photo.

Finally, here's one of the group - I think this had the "beauty" setting switched on!

Sayyyyyy cheeeeeessee! #picperfectwiththree @threeuk @ziferblatedgest

A photo posted by Becca (@beccajtalbot) on Aug 15, 2015 at 9:36am PDT