How to take landscape photos with a phone

If you’re wondering how to take landscape photos with a phone, then you’ve come to the right place. I’ve captured the natural world with some of the best cameras for landscape photography, but in a pinch, I still reach for my camera phone. Landscape photography is one of the most accessible forms of photography because you don’t necessarily need high-end kit, and potential subjects are all around us.

Most of the images here were captured on my iPhone 13, but any Apple or Android device with a decent camera will serve you well. In my opinion, capturing landscapes is less about kit and more about good planning and composition. Throughout this article, I’ll talk you through setting up your phone for success, a few accessories you might like to invest in, and the best time of day to capture landscapes. So, grab your phone (and maybe a tripod) and I'll walk you through my landscape photography tips.

Mike Harris

I’m Digital Camera World’s top tutor for photography techniques, having worked as Technique Editor (later Dep Ed) on N-Photo: The Nikon Magazine. But while I’m a self-confessed camera nerd, I also love capturing photos with my phone. So much so, I’ve supplied iPhone photography tutorials for Apple website, iMore. I’m a firm believer that you can take incredible photos on any camera, and that includes your phone.

What is the best camera phone?

If you’re looking for the best camera phones money can buy, I’d plump for the iPhone 16 Pro Max and Google Pixel 9 Pro XL. But I still use my aging iPhone 13 and still capture great landscape photos, regardless. Landscape photography doesn’t have to be about using the latest and greatest tech. At its core, it’s about finding a great subject, lining up an interesting composition, and capturing the scene in beautiful lighting. I’d rather tick these three criteria and use an iPhone 11 than tick none of them and use an iPhone 16 Pro Max.

As long as your camera phone can capture a sharp image with good colors, you’ve got everything you need. But that’s not to say a tip-top camera phone isn’t worth having. Benefits of a flagship device will likely include more lenses, higher-resolution sensors, and the ability to shoot RAW. You can also expect better computational photography in more premium phones, too.

What is computational photography?

Computational photography is essentially advanced automatic post-processing that happens the instant you capture a photo on your phone. It’s largely the reason why camera phone images look so darn good (small, ultra-vibrant screens also help). Capture the same scene with a dedicated camera and a Google Pixel 9, the latter will look sharper, more vibrant, and more evenly exposed (straight out of the camera). This is because of all the computational photography that’s gone on in the background. This can be as simple as sharpening and as complicated as forming a HDR photo.

AI is a key component of computational photography, and as new flagship camera phones are released, it’s only going to get better. But there's a downside to computational photography – it can be a little too effective. In some instances, it can make phone images look a little too overprocessed, dare I say fake. A good example of this is the iPhone’s tendency to oversharpen, something that’s been prevalent in various generations for years. One way to reduce the effects of computational photography is to shoot RAW, but even then, it's likely to still be present in your photos.

1. Nail your exposure

Modern phones use a mixture of automatic exposure and computational photography to capture well-exposed images in all but the most challenging of lighting environments. For the most part, this means you can happily snap away without ever learning the exposure triangle. But, there are times when you might want to take a little more direct control to, say, darken a moody sky. In those instances, most devices offer the ability to adjust your exposure in-camera.

On my iPhone, I can swipe upwards while the camera is activated to bring up a row of settings icons. The exposure icon is a circle with plus and minus signs inside. Tapping this brings up an exposure-compensation meter, which I can slide left to darken the exposure or right to increase the exposure. Alternatively, I can tap the screen to focus and next to the AF point, drag the sun icon up and down to increase or decrease the exposure, respectively. Another way to manually control your phone’s camera settings is to download a manual camera app, such as ProCam 8.

2. Where to focus

Both tiny sensors and wider lenses mean phones exhibit large depths of field. In fact, super-shallow depths of field aren’t possible without computational tech intelligently blurring the background for you. As such, you don’t need to be particularly diligent when focusing. Still, I’m a firm believer in learning the right way to do something, especially if you plan on taking landscapes with a dedicated camera anytime soon. The easiest way to work is by simply focusing on the focal point of your image, be it a lighthouse, mountain, or tree.

But for landscapes without an obvious subject, try focusing roughly a third of the way into the scene. Another focusing method that many landscape photographers use is called double-distance focusing. This works best with wide-angle fields of view (present on most camera phones) and requires you to locate the part of the image that’s closest to you that you want pin-sharp. You then approximate the distance to that object and focus roughly double that distance.

3. Landscape composition

Landscape composition is a huge subject to distill into a couple of paragraphs, so I’m going to talk about two of the simplest and versatile techniques you can learn: the rule of thirds and leading lines. The rule of thirds splits the image into a 3 x 3 rectangle made up of two vertical lines and two horizontal lines. The four places where these lines meet are called intersection points. Place your main subject, the focal point of your image, on any one of these intersection points, and you’ll end up with a pleasing composition. You can also place the horizon on one of the vertical lines, too. The rule of thirds is so popular that most phone cameras and indeed third-party camera apps overlay a rule-of-thirds grid onto the camera’s live view for reference.

Leading lines (sometimes called lead-in lines) lead the viewer’s eye into the image and towards areas of interest. The simplest example of a leading line is a road that recedes into the distance – your eye cannot help but follow it. A huge variety of objects can form leading lines, for landscape photographers, this might be the curvature of a lake, an avenue of trees, a winding track, or a rocky incline. Just make sure that any leading lines guide the viewer towards a point of interest and not out of the frame (or towards nothing in particular) because this will detract from your main subject.

4. Plan your landscape shoot

The best landscape photographers plan each shoot meticulously, but even a little planning can go a long way. The first thing to consider is the location. Whether you’re visiting a rural area or are lucky enough to live in one, research landscape hotspots online to find the best places to visit. The next step is to keep tabs on the weather. The Clear Outside app is a good choice, but I recommend using two or three to gauge exactly what conditions you’ll be facing.

And don’t always be put off by rain. Torrential rain will ruin a shoot, but oftentimes the lighting between showers can be extremely photogenic, not to mention a sodden landscape will provide punchier colors. And finally, consider downloading a planning app like The Photographer's Ephemeris or PhotoPills. These apps will tell you the direction of the sun at a given location, date, and time, as well as timings for the golden hours, sunrise, sunset, and more.

5. Shoot during the golden hours

Light and composition are the two most important factors when it comes to landscape photography. Soft lighting is essential – in most cases – and soft golden light is even better. With that in mind, the worst time to capture landscapes is in the middle of a sunny day. This is when the sun will be at its highest, casting harsh, ugly shadows and bright hotspots across the land. To capture soft light, you need to shoot early in the morning, late in the evening, or during an overcast day when the sunlight is diffused by the clouds. But the most consistently beautiful times of day are the golden hours. These take place just after sunrise and just before sunset, bathing the landscape in soft, golden-colored light.

6. Shoot RAW

RAW files capture as much image data as possible, which means they’re more pliable when edited and they deliver images at your phone sensor’s native resolution. You see, a HEIF or JPEG image will not only be compressed, but automatically edited to appear sharper and more saturated. RAW files are a blank slate, so why they might appear softer and more dull, fresh from the camera, you have more headroom when editing them.

Phone RAW files tend not to be true RAW files as many are still affected by computational photography, but if you want to get the most out of your phone images, they’re still the way to go. That said, not all phones can shoot RAW files, and it certainly isn’t the end of the world if yours doesn’t. Some camera phones allow you to switch RAW on/off in-camera, but if you cannot find this option, it might be lurking in your camera app’s settings.

7. Use a tripod

Camera shake isn’t nearly as problematic when using a phone as it is a dedicated camera. A combination of automatic exposure and computational photography means your phone is working hard to capture tack-sharp images, so much so, taking a soft photo on the latest smartphones is actually quite hard. Unless, of course, you’re shooting at night.

Even at night, features such as iPhone’s Night Mode and Google Pixel’s Night Sight still make it very possible to capture sharp images, handheld, in low light. But there’s no doubt about it, you’ll capture your sharpest low-light images if you use a tripod. And the same goes for ND filters, too, which I’ll talk about next on my list.

There’s one final reason why tripods are still very useful for landscape phone photographers: composition. A tripod allows you to fine-tune your composition so it’s absolutely perfect. Plus, if you’re hand-holding your phone at sunset, your arms are going to start aching pretty quickly. As such, you might just think: That’ll do, and go home. But with a tripod, you can set up the perfect shot and wait for the perfect lighting conditions. Yes, a tripod impacts the portability of a phone, but it might also help you capture your best landscape photos ever.

8. Use smartphone filters

Clip-on phone filters are by no means an essential purchase for landscape phone photographers. In fact, they can prove mighty fiddly. But for very specific uses, they can prove worthwhile, not to mention fun to use. The problem with combining phones and filters is that you’re often working against your phone’s automatic exposure and computational photography, as it attempts to mitigate the effects of a filter.

For example, attach an ND filter – which darkens the scene to lengthen the exposure – and an iPhone will simply readjust its exposure and computational photography to deliver an image of roughly the same brightness as if you weren’t using the filter. The trick is to download a manual camera app like ProCam 8. This will allow you to fix your exposure, preventing the camera from overriding the effects of the filter.

You can download apps that will replicate the long-exposure effects of an ND filter. If I want a long exposure in a pinch and I’m using my iPhone, I’ll often capture a Live photo, which can be converted into a long exposure by selecting the ‘Live’ lozenge above the preview of the image in the Photos app. And when it comes to ND grads, computational photography has gotten so good, the latest phones tend to do a very good job of balancing even the most challenging exposures. But one filter effect that computational photography cannot replicate is how a polarizing filter cuts glare. As such, a clip-on polarizer can prove quite handy.

9. Edit your images

AI-powered computational photography has made it very difficult indeed not to capture a technically good-looking image on the latest phones. So much so, you don’t need to edit your images at all. But in my mind, photography is about conveying your vision, not your phone’s. Even if the phone edit looks good, you might want to stamp your mark on your landscape images by editing them yourself. And if you’re shooting RAW, I’d always recommend offering your photos the post-production treatment.

The App Store and Google Play are awash with phone-friendly editing apps, with my favorites being the iPhone Photos App’s built-in editor and Adobe Photoshop Express. My advice would be to choose an app that isn’t just filters and effects-based. If you’re serious about capturing beautiful landscape photos, you want full control of each individual element of your edit. As such, look for applications that allow you to tweak tonal sliders such as shadows, contrast, saturation, color temperature, etc.

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