It might seem odd for our team here at Sweet Gibraltar Weddings to be suggesting you use any kind of regular smartphone or tablet for capturing images at your nuptials, given that stunning professional photography can literally be a feature of the packages we offer for weddings in Gibraltar.

The fact is, though… even if you use the services of a fabulous professional wedding photographer, unless you have a strict ‘no-cameras’ policy among the guests at your wedding, it’s pretty much guaranteed that at least someone will be using a smartphone to snap away on your big day. And those photos, in turn, will probably show up on social media at some point.

You might as well, then, help those amateur photographers get their approach right when taking images at your wedding – if, indeed, you don’t end up wielding a smartphone camera yourself at some point. So, let’s look at some tips that could help.

Become familiar with the settings and features on your smartphone camera

With the world having been firmly in the ‘smartphone era’ since the debut of the original iPhone in 2007, even the oldest and crudest smartphone cameras will tend to have some interesting features for helping you improve your amateur photography.

Your smartphone will likely have settings for improving the standard of the images created in conditions of particularly low or high light, and of course, you will want to pore over the specifications for your specific model.

The latest iPhones, for instance – which, at the time of typing, are the iPhone 13 range and the third-generation iPhone SE – offer features such as Photographic Styles for personalising the look of your images within the Camera app, and macro photography allowing for amazing sharp-focus close-ups.

Educate yourself on the basics of lighting and composition
Of course, with so much else to be planned for in relation to your upcoming wedding, we aren’t suggesting it should be any great priority of yours to invest in a War and Peace-sized guide to the world of smartphone photography. After all, you’ll presumably be putting some of your money into a professional wedding photographer who will be well-versed in how to get great shots every time.

Still, you might want to get in some smartphone photography practice in the weeks and/or months leading up to the big day. That should include making yourself aware of the fundamental aspects of lighting – such as what the light source will be in any given photo – and composition. As far as the latter is concerned, you’ll probably want to avoid your shots looking too ‘busy’ and chaotic.

Keep your camera lens clean!

It sounds like such a basic thing to state as advice, but of course, it is such ‘basic’ things that amateur smartphone photographers can so often forget or overlook.

Dust and grease can easily accumulate on a smartphone camera lens, so before you get snapping away at your wedding (or for that matter, anyone else’s!), you should be sure to wipe it with a lens-friendly cloth. A microfibre cloth should be fine for getting rid of fingerprint smudges, and are preferable for this purpose to tissues, which can leave dust particles behind.

So, to give a short answer to the question of whether you can use a smartphone camera to good effect at a wedding… you certainly can, and many people do at their weddings in Gibraltar. But of course, any smartphone photography at your own nuptials is likely to be a complement to the professional photographer’s skill and expertise, instead of the main way you visually document your special day.

For further help, advice, and services in relation to planning a wedding in the British Overseas Territory, simply get in touch with Sweet Gibraltar Weddings today.We can be reached via phone or email.