In any situation in life, the camera you have on your smartphone can usually do the trick. How great of resolution do you really need when taking a selfie from arms length away? For many other applications, the features offered on a smart device do a great job at giving you what you want.

The iPhone 6 s has a 12 megapixel camera. That’s pretty decent. When the phone first came out, people raved about how clear the photos were. While that is true, any creative person with a desire to be more artistic and purposeful with their photos has a few complaints. As soon as you begin zooming, the resolution automatically deteriorates. In addition to this, there is little way to manipulate the settings to get the desired effect you’re looking for.

In the way of smartphone photos, what you see is basically what you get. While you might be stuck with the internal settings of the camera of your phone, there are tips and tricks of the trade that will have your pictures looking like they were taken by a pro. When you travel, this is really all you want anyway, right? To capture the experience pristinely, and look like a boss doing it…

Utilize HDR

For most smartphone users who aren’t professional photographers, they lack the ability to take professional looking photos because they simply aren’t aware of the features that are available to them. The iPhone has this nifty thing called HDR (High dynamic range) that takes three photos; one bright one, one normal one, and one dark one, and mixes them together to create the depth that you see through the natural eye.

While HDR is extremely useful in bringing dynamics into your picture (why it’s called high dynamic range) complaints are that it can go a little overboard at times and make things look cartoony. That’s where auto HDR comes in. It senses when to use HDR and when not to, so you’re covered in that aspect. With HDR you’ll be taking dynamic photos with the click of a button.

Buy External Accessories

Anything great can be made greater with a little help from friends…or in this case, accessories. This could mean applications that allow you to put cool effects on photos, this could be other apps that allow you to digitally manipulate the final product, this could also mean other accessories that effect the photo before it’s taken.

There are external flashes that plug right into your phone that give you the effect of  professional studio quality lighting, there are tripods, selfie sticks, and mounts that all allow you to take a greater variety of photos. There are shutter remotes that snap the photo at the click of a button instead of having to use your thumb to awkwardly reach the shutter. The rad accessories go on and on.

If you find that all the gear in the world still doesn’t help your artistic eye, do what people have done for centuries and learn by observation and example. View other people’s work and see how the best get it done.