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Pro tips for better cycling pics with your mobile phone!

Tips from X-Games gold medal winning photographer Peter Morning

While riding, the best camera you have is the one in your pocket, which is most likely a mobile phone. But to make an image stand out on the 'Gram or Strava requires a more than point-shoot-pray. 2020 X-Games gold medal winning photographer and Peloton Biker Peter Morning has shot everything from snowboarding to skiing to Rampage to athlete profiles.

Below are his tips for how to get the most out of your phone:

Shoot with the light: This is the most common mistake. With a DSLR camera you want to be facing your light source, but cell phone photography is different. Position yourself with the sun or light at your back. Once comfortable with that, play around and try positioning the light source at a 30-45 degree angle for some added depth. You can certainly mix in those great sunspot images when shooting directly into the sun, but there’s a much higher degree of difficulty there.

Never use the zoom feature: No two finger pinching! Digital zooms are not your friend. Treat your cell phone like a prime lens and physically position yourself closer or farther away to create the desired frame. You can always zoom in later when editing, but you can’t zoom out later. Digital zooms are all downside, don’t use ‘em.

Go Low: Getting creative with angles is an easy way to add some variety to shots. Start out by shooting really low. Because of their small size you can get much closer to the ground with a cell phone lens than you can with a traditional DSLR lens. Those worms-eye views are so much different than our typical perspective that they often turn out really well. I love shooting groomers this way.

Work around the flash: The close proximity of the flash to the lens on most cell phone cameras results in blown out images. Instead, use a different phone in flashlight mode, holding it two or three feet away from the phone you’re taking the picture with. You can create some really cool dimension and shadow with your shots and your image quality will improve drastically. Just be careful not to get the light source in the frame.

Get up close! This is a big one. Whenever you hand someone a phone to take a picture invariably they stand five feet farther away than they should. With portrait mode and some of the macro features on today’s cell phone cameras they’re much better equipped to take pics at close range. Take advantage of it.

Pro tips for better cycling pics with your mobile phone!