As a professional photographer, Scott Kelby is used to lugging around a lot of equipment in order to get that just-right image of whatever he’s shooting. But then he started noticing his wife was capturing equally great shots using just her iPhone. 

“I’m carrying all this gear, and she’s over there just crushing it,” says Kelby, who is based in the Tampa area. “She’s got this light, breezy thing, and I’m rolling a backpack. And she’s getting all these great shots.” 

That helped inspire Kelby to take a closer look at iPhones and the camera technology they contain. He discovered that the technology is pretty sophisticated, especially in the phone’s newer models. 

“It’s better than the cameras we used to spend a tremendous amount of money for just a few years ago,” he says. “So it started to sink in that this is a really good camera. I started taking it more seriously, and it changed how I looked at it.” 

Kelby shares what he learned in The iPhone Photography Book: How to Get Professional-Looking Images Using the Camera You Always Have with You (Rocky Nook, $29.95). “I started taking my iPhone photography seriously, and once I was getting the results I wanted, I was, like, ‘I’ve got to share this,’” he says. “It’s like a secret. And everyone shoots with an iPhone; it’s the most-shot camera in the world.” 

Teaching others about photography isn’t new for Kelby. He’s an award-winning author of more than 60 books (including How Do I Do That in Photoshop? and Professional Portrait Retouching Techniques for Photographers) and the editor and publisher of Photoshop User magazine. He’s also cohost of the weekly photography talk show The Grid and leads digital photography workshops and seminars around the world. 

“I have that teaching thing in my DNA,” he says. “I’m like that guy where if I go to a great restaurant, I have to call everyone I know the next day and tell them, ‘Oh my gosh, you’ve got to try this new burger place.’ It’s a sickness; when I’ve found something cool, I have to tell everyone.  

“That’s how I wound up as a teacher,” he continues. “I realized that I really love this. I love turning people on to stuff that makes them happy. And it makes me happy when I see people learn new stuff and they’re excited about it. As a teacher, that’s just a home run. That’s why you teach.” 

When Kelby thought about how many people use iPhones on a regular basis—Apple claimed more than 1 billion iPhones are in active use around the world during a 2021 earnings call—he wanted to help them take great photos with the device that’s always in their hands. 

“When you’re using your iPhone to take photos, you’re documenting the visual history of your life,” he says. “You want to be able to look back on those photos and say, ‘Man, that’s really good.’” 

Especially since you’re probably not going to be the only person looking at those photos. “Our photos today are judged,” says Kelby. “Back before social media, if you wanted to see someone’s photos, you had to go to someone’s house. Now we share everything, and we want it to look good.” 

Kelby has found that people respond immediately to a good photo. “If you post a bad photo, you hear crickets,” he says. “People react to beautiful photography, and the nicer the picture, the more of a reaction. We want to take good pictures. We want to hear from our friends that our picture looks good.” 

Techniques to Try 

The iPhone Photography Book is packed with tips, from the more obvious (the importance of holding your phone still when taking a photo) to the more obscure (using the phone’s magnifier for super closeup shots). There’s advice for taking pictures of people, landscapes and food, plus all kinds of insight about editing photos. 

One of the biggest, most basic mistakes that people make when taking photos with their iPhone? “They don’t shoot with intention,” says Kelby. “They need to really treat it like they would their other cameras. When you start thinking, ‘This is a great camera, and I can take great photos with it,’ it changes the quality of your photos. You start spending a little more time with it.” 

He’s a big proponent of using the phone’s portrait mode when taking photos of people, as well as shooting from above, the same way you might hold the phone when taking a selfie. “It makes people look better,” he says. “It strengthens the jawline, hides any extra chin and is very flattering. Everyone looks better from a high angle. Learning these little tricks that make people look better really improves your overall technique.” 

For family photos, a tilt of the head can go a long way. “When you say for everyone to get together, one thing they do is they put their arms around each other,” says Kelby. “Everyone bunches in, but there are all these gaps between their heads. It makes the family not look close. But if everyone tilts their heads in toward each other, it changes the entire photo and makes everyone look like a close loving family rather than convicts in a line.” 

Good light is important no matter your photo subject. For photographing people, bright sun isn’t especially flattering. “The sun is the harshest, meanest, nastiest light source in the universe,” says Kelby. “If you can get out of the direct sun, that’s a huge thing. Go under shade or an awning, and the light is going to be much more flattering and pleasing to your subject.” 

If you really want to up your game, he recommends purchasing a one-stop diffuser. “Professionals use them all the time to diffuse light from the sun,” he says. “It’s the best 10 bucks you can spend on photography.” 

Another tip is to avoid photographing during the height of the day. “If you want great light, you’ve got to get up early and shoot before dawn or shoot at sunset,” he says. “In the morning and at sunset, you have soft light. The sun is low in the sky and everything looks beautiful. Cities look beautiful, landscapes look beautiful, people look beautiful.” 

He also advises people to take advantage of all the ways that iPhones help users improve their photos either before they take them or afterward. One feature that a lot of people don’t know about is the ability to change the brightness of a photo as you take it. “Just tap to focus on the face, then put your finger on the screen and drag up until it gets brighter or down until it gets darker. By doing that you can control the brightness of the scene.” 

In the book, Kelby walks through the photo-editing options the iPhone provides. His number-one editing tip: “Don’t forget to sharpen your photos,” he says. “Every photo needs sharpening, and you can usually get away with quite a bit of sharpness.” A sign that you’ve gone too far? Your photo starts to look “crunchy.” 

Photographing Florida 

Kelby, who grew up in Lakeland, has taken photos all over the state of Florida. For especially great shots, he recommends spots like Key West, Tampa’s Ybor City and the Sunshine Skyway. He also says it’s easy to find lots of great birds to photograph during a vacation in Florida. 

Walt Disney World is a place where Kelby likes to take his camera. “I love to go to Disney World and take pictures that don’t look like they were taken there, and then challenge people to figure out where they were taken,” he says. 

When taking vacation or travel photos, Kelby says to avoid having too many unnecessary people in your pictures. “Try to avoid tourists in your pictures,” he says. “Tourists kill the shots.” 

People might wonder how that’s possible, but Kelby says it usually just takes a little patience. He once tried the technique in front of Cinderella Castle at Walt Disney World, and it took only about 15 minutes to capture a moment when no one was in front of the castle. 

“You only need a split second [to take the photo],” he says. “So just wait and try to get a picture of the beach with the lifeguard tower where there’s no one around. Those kinds of things help photos look less like tourist photos and more like professional photos.” 

Remember Kelby’s tip about when to find the best light? That also applies to encountering fewer people. “Tourists don’t get up early,” he says. “If you get up early and go out, you’ll have the place to yourself. That’s a trick I’ve used all over the world. Be on the beach at 6:45 in the morning, and you have the whole place to yourself.” 

For more tips and insight from Scott Kelby along with a portfolio of his work, visit scottkelby.com. 

Beth Luberecki is a freelance writer based in Nokomis, Florida, and a longtime contributor to TOTI Media. Learn more about her at bethluberecki.com.