Self Photos with Your Smartphone

Here is everything you need
to take great cell phone photos.

Gardner Camera Angle

Most carp fishermen have to learn the art of taking a self photo.  You’re alone the bank alone and you catch a good size fish, and you want to get a photo of you holding the fish.  How do you do it? The “old” way I used to do it was with a camera.  I had a Canon compact camera and I set the timer for the shutter and the number of shots. Then I pressed the shutter button and ran into the camera’s view with the fish while the self timer clicked away.

Vastar Tripod Adapter
Cell Phone Mount

Phone set up and ready
for me to say "cheese".

I now generally have a better and more convenient way to get the photo with my smartphone.  I should mention that I do not have an expensive smartphone.  It is a recently purchased LG Aristo phone that I bought for $100 on sale.  But, it has some phenomenal features when it comes to taking pictures. It also takes 13 megapixel photos. The most important feature is something called voice shutter.  It’s in the settings and I keep it turned on.  This eliminates any self timer.  You get into the picture and simply say “smile” or “cheese” and it snaps the picture when you say so.  I will hold the fish at different angles and direct the phone when to take the photos.  In addition, my phone has photo editing capabilities.  I can rotate the photo, crop it, enhance it, etc. right in the phone.  It’s a photo editing program built into the phone. Amazing!

Here’s what else you need for those self photos with the phone.  You will need some type of holder.  You could use a tripod, but I prefer to use a bankstick with a mount called a Gardner camera angle (screws into the bankstick). The cell phone will not screw into my camera mount as a camera does so I purchased an adapter called a Vastar Universal Tripod Adapter Cell Phone Holder. This ingenious little tool is a cell phone holder that screws into the Gardner camera angle, and it is adjustable for your size cell phone.  I got it at Amazon for about 8 bucks.  A real buy!

So that’s it.  Take a look at the photo I have for an example.  All done very easily and conveniently with my smartphone!

This beautiful shot of a mirror landed yesterday was taken
and later edited with my smartphone.