Summer is the perfect season to explore new places, soak up the sun, and capture stunning travel photos. Whether you’re hiking in the mountains, wandering through a new city, visiting family, or relaxing on the beach, your phone is likely your go-to camera. Luckily, modern phones are packed with powerful photography tools that make it easier than ever to take great shots on the go without the need for expensive, professional equipment.
We’ll walk you through how to make the most of your phone’s built-in features, whether you use an iPhone or an Android, to level up your summer travel photography.
Use Smart HDR and Night Mode for Dynamic Lighting
Summer means long days and bright sun, but not all lighting is easy to capture. Thankfully, phones today come equipped with Smart HDR (iPhone), HDR Mode (Google), and AI Scene Optimization (Samsung) to help balance shadows and highlights. This means you can take a photo with bright skies and shaded faces and still get great detail in both.
HDR (High Dynamic Range) works by combining multiple exposures into one balanced image. This is especially useful when shooting in high-contrast settings, like a sunny beach with deep shadows under an umbrella or a mountain scene where the sky is much brighter than the ground. Without HDR, either the sky ends up overexposed or the darker areas lose all detail. With HDR, your phone blends the best parts of each exposure so you get vivid skies, rich textures, and natural-looking photos that closely match what your eyes see.
When you’re exploring places with challenging lighting such as a forest trail with streams of sunlight or a bustling street at golden hour, HDR helps ensure your photos look polished and professional without any extra editing. Learn more about this feature here: click here for help with iPhone, click here for more info about your Samsung, or here for help with Google camera.
Plus, when the sun goes down, Night Mode (on both iPhone and Android models) kicks in automatically or can be toggled on. This allows you to capture warm summer nights without blur or grain in low-light conditions. Your summer night travel adventures can be captured effectively with this feature so you can share what happens after sunset just as effectively as during the day.
Travel Photography Tip: Try taking twilight beach shots or sunset in the country to really test what your camera’s Night Mode can do.
Zoom Without Losing Quality
Summer travel often means encountering breathtaking landscapes or interesting architecture. To capture details from a distance, take advantage of optical zoom (available on most dual- and triple-lens phones). The iPhone 16 pro model offers up to 5x optical zoom, and many Android phones go even further, with some flagship models reaching up to 10x optical zoom.
Digital zoom can degrade photo quality, so lean on optical zoom or physically get closer when possible. Optical zoom uses the phone’s camera lenses to magnify the image, just like a traditional camera, so you retain sharpness and detail. You can use the pinch gesture on the screen to zoom in on your subject. As you zoom in past the optical zoom range (which varies depending on the phone model), the phone will start using digital zoom to magnify the image. You’ll notice the quality may start to degrade as you go beyond the optical zoom limit.
Digital zoom simply crops and enlarges the image using software, which can lead to pixelation and loss of clarity. When you’re trying to capture a distant landmark or a moment from far away, optical zoom gives you a much clearer and more professional-looking result. If you’re using digital zoom, try not to go beyond 2x or 3x unless necessary, or consider cropping the photo later in editing for better control.
Use Portrait Mode for People and Food
Travel is about the people you’re with and the culture you’re tasting, so use Portrait Mode to bring out the best in both. Portrait Mode blurs the background slightly to mimic a DSLR’s depth-of-field, perfect for capturing your friend in front of a famous statue or that corn dog at the state fair.
To take portraits on an iPhone in Portrait mode, open the Camera app, select Portrait mode, and frame your subject. You can then adjust the depth of field using the depth control slider and choose a lighting effect like Natural Light, Studio Light, or Stage Light. Android phones offer similar controls within their Portrait Mode, including background blur adjustments and lighting filters.
Tip: Adjusting the depth slider changes how much blur appears in the background. So, use a shallow depth for dramatic portraits with creamy backgrounds, or increase the depth to keep more of the scenery visible for a travel-focused shot. Try different lighting effects too to see what flatters your subject best, especially in tricky lighting conditions like shade or indoor cafes.
Stabilize for Action Shots
Travel photography often involve movement: street performers, crashing waves, windswept coastal grass, or that perfect jump in front of a waterfall. Both iPhone and Android phones include image stabilization technology that reduces blur in action shots and video.
Additionally, use burst mode for fast-moving subjects. Just hold the shutter to take multiple shots in quick succession—perfect for capturing that mid-air jump or a bike whizzing past. You can also lock focus by tapping and holding on your subject until you see “AE/AF Lock” appear (on iPhone) or a Lock icon (on Android). This keeps your phone from refocusing mid-shot, which is especially helpful when tracking movement or capturing action scenes where timing and clarity are everything. Locking focus ensures your subject stays sharp even while in motion.
Don’t Forget the Basics
While tech helps, the fundamentals of great photography still apply:
- Lighting: Early morning and late afternoon (golden hour) offer soft, flattering light.
- Composition: Use the rule of thirds by turning on gridlines and placing your subject off-center.
- Editing: Take advantage of built-in editing tools to adjust brightness, contrast, and color temperature without overdoing it.
Click here to read more about our tips for smartphone photography.
Start Snapping!
Your phone is more than just a way to stay connected, it’s your passport to stunning travel photography. With features like Night Mode, Portrait Mode, ultra-wide lenses, and powerful zoom capabilities, capturing the essence of your summer adventures has never been easier.
So charge up, get outside, and start snapping.
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