Attitude’s Travel Insider: How to take the perfect holiday snaps on your iPhone

Lots of people think you need to fork out a fortune on a good camera to get the best travel pictures. I’m telling you now, those people are wrong. Yes, a snazzy DSLR will take incredibly sharp, stunning photographs – but actually an iPhone camera can be just as useful (and a whole lot easier to handle), especially if you’re moving around a lot or have limited space in your luggage.

It’s fairly simple; phones are light, easy to carry around and you won’t need to buy loads of additional equipment like long lenses (pricey), spare memory cards (pricey) and cushioned camera bags (not pricey, but often ugly) to get the full effect. So, if you’re not planning on sidelining into a career as a professional photographer, it might be worth just investing in a decent phone with a few great apps.

“Experimenting with apps that imitate long camera exposure like Slow Shutter Cam costs only £0.69, but will add beautiful motion blur and light trail effects to your footage,” explains photographer Ilya Mikhaylov. “And don’t limit yourself to a single take, use ‘Burst Mode’.

“Tap the camera app, point it at your subject to make a shot while holding the shutter button for a couple of seconds. After that you’ll get a series of pictures in your Photos app, where you can choose the very best one.”

And that’s not all, if you’re lucky enough to have the new iPhone 6, you can now create your own little film of your favourite destination, without having to rely on social apps like Vine or Instagram. Here, London photographer Dan Rubin, shares his top tips on creating the perfect time-lapse photo:

1. Time-lapse works best when events naturally occurring over a long period of time, so use it for such occasions like cloud movement, changing tides, traffic or people passing by, etc.
2. Fully charge your phone before starting a time-lapse recording, and ideally plug it into an external battery pack or mains power (be careful with mains, especially if outside or in situations where water or moisture is possible). iPhone 6, but it’s still important to plan ahead for the length of *actual* time you want to capture.
3. Auto-exposure and auto-focus work well to keep the focus constant in a time-lapse situation. Do this by long-pressing on the area of the composition you want to use as the target.
4. Prop up your iPhone securely. Time-lapse videos generally record one scene over a long period of time, so it’s important there’s no movement.
5. Even if you set everything up right the first time, you may want to tweak and adjust the finished clip before sharing it with the world. Use apps like Videon to straighten slightly crooked horizons, and Video Crop to crop the finished video.

GETA (Gay European Tourism Association) recommends that gay travellers check the legal position of all countries they are planning to visit. Visit the IGLA Rainbow Europe Guide at ilga-europe.org or visit the Foreign Office & Commonwealth website fco.gov.uk before you make any travel plans.

Karen is a freelance Travel & Entertainment Editor based in London. She can be found tweeting at @KarenNEdwards and contacted through her personal blog popandprettythings.com

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