Technologies

Take Amazing iPhone Photos With These 6 Pro Photographer Tips

If you’ve ever wondered how a pro photographer takes pictures with a smartphone, I’ve got tips to help you snap great shots.

Today’s smartphone cameras work hard to make it easy for you to capture great photos. Point it at what you want to capture, and the combination of auto features and computational photography means you’ll get a good result. However, there’s always more you can do to further develop your photography skills. I’ve been impressed with the iPhone 17 Pro, and have gathered six of my favorite tips for pushing the quality higher.

Read more: Best Camera Phone to Buy in 2025

As a professional photographer, I’ve been honing my skills for years, elevating iPhone photos from simple Instagram snaps into award-worthy pieces of art. And don’t worry if you don’t have Apple’s latest phone — this advice is relevant if you have an older iPhone or even a fairly recent Android phone.

That said, let’s dive in.

Experiment with the different lenses

It’s easy to stand in front of a picturesque scene and flick between the wide, super wide and zoomed-in views on the phone, but it’s more difficult to understand exactly why one might be better than the other for a particular composition. To figure it out, you need to take an extra moment to look at what’s important in the scene in front of you.

Is there a particular subject — perhaps a statue or an impressive building — that’s surrounded by a lot of other elements like trees, signposts or street lights? Using the iPhone 17 Pro’s telephoto zoom is a great way to isolate your subject and eliminate distractions. You may need to move back a bit and then zoom in to keep it in frame, but simplifying your scene like this will help your subject stand out.

Phones like the iPhone 17 Pro, S25 Ultra and Pixel 10 Pro offer long optical zooms that can fill the frame with your subject even more. I love a longer zoom for taking candid photos without disturbing someone, or for narrowing your composition in an otherwise cluttered, chaotic scene.

But perhaps it’s those extra surrounding elements that really add to the scene and provide context for where you are. In that case, using the standard zoom will allow you to keep those items in the shot. Switching to the super wide view will capture even more of the surroundings. So to avoid your subject getting lost in the frame, you might want to move closer and find interesting foreground objects (a patch of flowers, a cool-looking rock) to add to the composition.

But you also need to…

Concentrate on your composition

While clever editing can help adjust colors or rescue an underexposed shot, there’s no amount of editing that can compensate for poor composition, where the elements in the frame aren’t arranged in a way that pleases the eye. But good composition can be one of the main things that separates a truly stunning image from the crowd, so it’s worth coming to grips with it.

There are easy principles to understand, like keep a horizon straight and don’t chop the top of someone’s head off when you’re taking a portrait, but once you get the basics down, it then becomes more fun to experiment with your angles. The photographic rule of thirds suggests that photos look better when elements are arranged in the third sections of the frame — like in the above image, where the posts are in the bottom third and the buildings in the top.

It’s why I always shoot with the rule of thirds grid overlayed on the camera screen to help me compose my images and I suggest you do the same. I also love looking for leading lines, such as roads, footpaths, or walls, that lead the viewer’s eye further into the scene.

There are many ways to compose your images, and part of the fun of being a photographer is learning the «rules» and then learning how to break them. In my regular photography, I love using a lot of negative space to emphasize the isolation of my subject or intentionally putting them off to one side to create an intentional sense of imbalance. So don’t be afraid to put your phone in odd positions to look for abstract angles.

Revisit at different times of day

There are many things we can control in a scene, like which direction to point the lens, where we stand and what filters to use, but factors like time of day and the weather remain, sadly, out of our hands. Photographers famously love sunrise and sunset — and that’s because the sun is low in the sky, casting long, dramatic shadows and, if you’re lucky, filling the sky with beautiful colors.

Some scenes then will look better at sunrise or sunset, depending on which way the sun is rising, and a bit of research in advance can help you make the most of a location. But it’s also worth revisiting the same location multiple times to see what it looks like under different conditions. Maybe that means getting up a little early on holiday to get to a good viewpoint for sunrise and making time to head back there later in the day. And while many photographers hate harsh mid-day lighting, it can often produce great shadows and contrast in urban areas that can be great for street photography

Don’t think that a good photo demands a blue sky sunny day either — a rainy day can often mean moody skies and dramatic lighting while rain-soaked streets reflect the lights of the city around them, especially at night. Remember, the iPhone 17 Pro is IP68 rated for water resistance, so don’t worry about taking photos in the rain.

Don’t be afraid of the dark

Don’t think that once the light goes altogether you need to stop shooting. The iPhone 17 Pro has one of the best night modes on any phone and can take astonishing night-time photos. City scenes, with car headlights, vibrant shop window displays and even festive holiday decorations can provide superb fodder for night shots. And don’t worry if it rains. Those wet streets will now reflect all of those lights, which can look amazing.

Check out our tutorial if you want to get even better results from your night-time phone photography.

Learn to take control

While the iPhone is great at automatically using settings to take a ‘correct’ image, what that really means is that it’s trying to balance all the tones in your image to avoid having dark shadows or bright highlights. Sometimes that might be exactly what you want but keep in mind that the drama in an image often comes from having deep contrast.

Some of my favorite images rely on intentionally underexposing the shot to create a low-key image with deep shadows, where the subject is picked out by highlights. You can achieve this effect on your iPhone, too. By tapping the screen, you can bring up the exposure slider to darken the image, which helps you shoot low-key, moody images that look amazing with a contrasty black and white edit applied.

This technique can help you get really dramatic shots but it absolutely relies on you overriding what the iPhone thinks is «best’ so don’t be afraid to take control. Remember: You’re the photographer. You’re in charge.

Add extra flair with editing

While the iPhone can take great, natural-looking images straight out of camera, for me that’s only half the story. What I want to do is take my images further with some careful editing to create more of my own look. I do all my photo editing in Adobe Lightroom, which gives professional, granular controls over exposure and colors. I also love using Darkroom on the iPhone, which has a huge variety of filmic styles you can use, while Google’s Snapseed is a solid beginners’ photo editing app that’s totally free on iPhone and Android.

I don’t like to go wild with my editing. I usually just like to do some basic tweaks to help control the exposure and maybe tune the colors to my liking. I might also play with some punchy black and white looks. Or maybe try and go all retro with some film looks.

Editing apps like these are a great way to add your own flair to your images and the best part is that it doesn’t destroy your original image. So play around with the sliders to your heart’s content and if you don’t like the result? Just go back to the original file and try again.

Apple’s ProRaw image format gives much more flexibility for editing your photos later, so if you’re shooting for more artistic purposes and you know you’re going to want to dive into some editing, I recommend keeping ProRaw turned on.

Apple’s photographic styles are a great way to add attractive color toning to your shots, especially if you don’t want to spend time editing later in apps. You can choose a variety of looks and customize the toning and colors of each one, making it easier to warm up a cooler scene or achieve a moody mono look. Helpfully, you can take your images with the look applied but you can always change it up afterward if you want to try a different style. Remember: there’s no right or wrong way to edit your image. It’s all down to what you think looks best.

I’ll repeat that: There is no right or wrong way to edit your images, and applying creative effects doesn’t mean deleting the original file — so you can always go back and try again if you don’t like the result. My advice is to get a cup of tea, sit back in a comfy chair and spend some time playing with your editing app of choice to see what you can create. You may be surprised at what you can come up with, even from images you took some time ago.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Connections Hints, Answers and Help for Feb. 5, #970

Here are some hints and the answers for the NYT Connections puzzle for Feb. 5 #970.

Looking for the most recent Connections answers? Click here for today’s Connections hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands puzzles.

Today’s NYT Connections puzzle is kind of tough. Read on for clues and today’s Connections answers.

The Times has a Connections Bot, like the one for Wordle. Go there after you play to receive a numeric score and to have the program analyze your answers. Players who are registered with the Times Games section can now nerd out by following their progress, including the number of puzzles completed, win rate, number of times they nabbed a perfect score and their win streak.

Read more: Hints, Tips and Strategies to Help You Win at NYT Connections Every Time

Hints for today’s Connections groups

Here are four hints for the groupings in today’s Connections puzzle, ranked from the easiest yellow group to the tough (and sometimes bizarre) purple group.

Yellow group hint: Star-spangled signs.

Green group hint: Smash into.

Blue group hint: Not green or red.

Purple group hint: Same surname.

Answers for today’s Connections groups

Yellow group: Cultural symbols of the US.

Green group: Collide with.

Blue group: Blue things.

Purple group: Lees of Hollywood.

Read more: Wordle Cheat Sheet: Here Are the Most Popular Letters Used in English Words

What are today’s Connections answers?

The yellow words in today’s Connections

The theme is cultural symbols of the US. The four answers are American flag, apple pie, bald eagle and baseball.

The green words in today’s Connections

The theme is collide with. The four answers are bump, butt, knock and ram.

The blue words in today’s Connections

The theme is blue things. The four answers are jeans, lapis lazuli, ocean and sky.

The purple words in today’s Connections

The theme is Lees of Hollywood. The four answers are Ang, Bruce, Christopher and Spike.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Strands Hints, Answers and Help for Feb. 5 #704

Here are hints and answers for the NYT Strands puzzle for Feb. 5, No. 704.

Looking for the most recent Strands answer? Click here for our daily Strands hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Mini Crossword, Wordle, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Today’s NYT Strands puzzle is a fun one, once you clue in on the theme. Some of the answers are difficult to unscramble, so if you need hints and answers, read on.

I go into depth about the rules for Strands in this story.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections and Mini Crossword answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: NYT Connections Turns 1: These Are the 5 Toughest Puzzles So Far

Hint for today’s Strands puzzle

Today’s Strands theme is: Quint-essential.

If that doesn’t help you, here’s a clue: Not four, or six.

Clue words to unlock in-game hints

Your goal is to find hidden words that fit the puzzle’s theme. If you’re stuck, find any words you can. Every time you find three words of four letters or more, Strands will reveal one of the theme words. These are the words I used to get those hints but any words of four or more letters that you find will work:

DAYS, GIVE, WOVE, DOVE, LOVE, DOGS, SCONE, STOLE, GEEK, LODE, SIEGE, SLEW, HENS

Answers for today’s Strands puzzle

These are the answers that tie into the theme. The goal of the puzzle is to find them all, including the spangram, a theme word that reaches from one side of the puzzle to the other. When you have all of them (I originally thought there were always eight but learned that the number can vary), every letter on the board will be used. Here are the nonspangram answers:

TOES, OCEANS, SENSES, VOWELS, BOROUGHS, WEEKDAYS

Today’s Strands spangram

Today’s Strands spangram is GIVEMEFIVE. To find it, start with the G that’s three letters to the right on the top row, and wind down.

Don’t miss any of our unbiased tech content and lab-based reviews. Add CNET as a preferred Google source.

Technologies

The Motorola Signature Is the Moto Phone I’ve Wanted for Years

Motorola’s new phone is its best flagship yet and could be the Galaxy S26 Plus rival that Samsung didn’t see coming.

At CES 2026, among the AI humanoids, flashy concepts and next-gen foldables, was a Motorola phone that I didn’t expect to be a CES highlight. And no, I’m not talking about theMotorola Razr Fold. While it was the talk of the town (after all, it is the company’s first-ever book-style foldable), there’s a premium smartphone with top specs and a sophisticated design: the Motorola Signature.

Recent high-end Motorola phones have had good-looking hardware, but they don’t compete with the Galaxy S25 Ultras or Pixel 10s of the world. They fall short in one or more areas, including display, performance, cameras, software or battery. The Motorola Signature is the company’s first flagship phone that looks confident enough to take on heavyweights like the upcoming Galaxy S26 Plus and the current iPhone 17, without faltering on either hardware or software.

I’ve been using it for a couple of days now, and this Motorola phone doesn’t have any major downsides, especially for the price. The biggest one could be availability: It won’t be coming to the US, but it is now available for purchase in India at an unbeatable price. It undercuts the OnePlus 15, iPhone 17 and the Pixel 10 by almost $150 or more (directly converted from INR).

With the ever-increasing prices of premium phones, the Motorola Signature is the flagship killer we’ve been waiting for. At about $660 (INR 59,999), it is hard to beat, and I can admit I’m finally excited about a Motorola phone that’s not a Razr.

Motorola Signature is lightweight, slim and rugged

The Motorola Signature has a 6.8-inch 1,264×2,780-pixel resolution AMOLED display with support for a 165Hz refresh rate. It is an LTPO panel, so it can be set to 1Hz for an always-on display (like the iPhone 17 series and Galaxy S25 Ultra), thereby saving battery life. Its resolution might not be as high as the Galaxy S25 Ultra’s, but it is a promising screen for gaming and content consumption.

I couldn’t find a game to test its 165Hz refresh rate, but watching YouTube videos, Instagram Reels and reading ebooks — both indoors and outdoors — was a pleasing experience. The screen remains legible in all lighting conditions.

Motorola’s new phone is powered by the Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Gen 5 chipset and is paired with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. While it’s not the highest-end chip available (that’d be the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5), it packs plenty of power. I had no issues in day-to-day use, occasional multitasking or gaming. My only complaint was with the camera shutter in low light, but we’ll get to it in a bit.

The Motorola Signature ships with Android 16 with the company’s in-house Hello UI on top. It is a comparatively clean interface with plenty of customization options to fine-tune your experience. One of my favorite features, Moto gestures (twist to open the camera or make a double-chop motion to turn on and off the flashlight) is always handy in unexpected ways.

You get an AI Key on the left side of the phone to trigger Moto AI (uses Perplexity or Microsoft Copilot), but it can only be triggered once you create a Motorola account. You can configure the button to do other shortcuts, like double-press it to take notes and press and hold to trigger Moto AI. But in reality, I didn’t use any of these features in my daily life and would’ve preferred the ability to remap them to a shortcut. Google’s Gemini assistant is also available.

The Signature has a 5,200-mAh silicon-carbon battery and supports 90-watt wired charging and 50-watt wireless charging. Should those speeds hold up, that battery might fill up quickly using either method. It lasted me an entire day on medium use, but on another day, I had to charge it twice when I pushed it with streaming, browsing, Google Maps navigation for 30 minutes and active camera usage. It doesn’t compete with OnePlus 15’s massive 7,300-mAh cell but does well to reduce battery anxiety.

All of this sounds more impressive when you take the Signature’s design into context: The flagship Qualcomm processor’s power, 5,000-mAh plus battery, big AMOLED screen and three 50-megapixel cameras housed in a slim and lightweight design. The new Motorola phone is 6.99mm thick and weighs just 186 grams. For context, the Galaxy S25 Plus, with a smaller battery, measures 7.3mm thick and weighs 190 grams, while most recent big phones weigh 200 grams or more.

I shifted from the iPhone 17 Pro Max and enjoyed using the Motorola Signature because it weighed less. But I didn’t expect it to be so light. The Signature feels good in my hand. I’m glad it doesn’t have sharp flat sides like the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Plus, I love its linen-inspired finish on the back, which sets it apart from the competition. Like its Edge siblings, the Signature is rated IP68 and IP69 for dust and water resistance (meaning it can survive being submerged under a meter of water for 30 minutes and high-pressure water jets), so there’s no fear of dust and water damage.

Improving on the 2 weakest links

Most Motorola phones that I’ve used in recent years, including the $1,300 Razr Ultra have one or two downsides: software support and/or cameras.

The Signature marks a new beginning for the brand as it joins the ranks of Samsung and Google with seven years of Android OS software and security updates. This is on par with Google Pixel and Samsung Galaxy phones and better than what OnePlus offers. I hope this new software update policy is implemented on more Motorola phones launching in 2026.

Secondly, the Motorola Signature (finally!) introduces an impressive camera system. On the back, you get three cameras: a 50-megapixel main camera with OIS, paired with a 50-megapixel telephoto camera with a 3x zoom lens and OIS, and a 50-megapixel ultrawide camera. This is the first Motorola phone with cameras that I wouldn’t trade for another setup during my vacations.

Photos from the primary and telephoto cameras have better color accuracy than previous Moto shooters. Images have a slightly warmer tone and are saturated — not as much as the OnePlus 15, which delivers much more saturated tones. I prefer Signature’s look in most scenarios.

However, the ultrawide-angle camera retains fewer details, and OnePlus does better in that regard.

The telephoto lens struggles with edge detection in low-light portraits, but I loved using it for architecture shots and capturing scenery around me. It can deliver some stunning shots even in 6x. Mind you, it has 3x optical zoom, but I shot the above photo in 6x, and it has a nice bokeh, good details and an overall pleasing look.

Motorola Signature final thoughts

Overall, the Signature has solid cameras for the price and the best optics yet for a Motorola phone. But there’s one hindrance: The camera shutter in low light is slow to process images. For instance, I wanted to snap a few action shots during a badminton game, but I missed some great smashes because the camera wouldn’t allow me to capture images faster.

The Motorola Signature marks a solid flagship comeback for the brand. It has a big and bright display, a capable processor, a versatile camera setup and good battery life. This phone is hard to fault in its price segment.

The Signature is now available to purchase in India at a starting price of INR 59,999 (approximately $660) for the 256GB variant. It will go on sale in Europe for €999 (approximately $1,170) with 512GB storage in the base version. Motorola has plans to launch its new flagship phone in more countries across the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia-Pacific regions. However, the Motorola Signature won’t be coming to the US.