Phone Photography & Design Basics
Composition, lighting, and free tools — make professional-looking visuals with the phone in your pocket.
6 lessons · about 0.9 hours
Read it instead
The phone in your pocket is enough. Module 5 is how to use it like you mean it.
Most content looks amateur for three reasons: framing, light and inconsistency. None of them need kit. This module fixes all three with the free tools, and gives you a shoot you can run in twenty minutes.
Lesson 1 is composition: the five rules that actually matter, decided in three seconds. Lesson 2 is lighting, the free version and the fifty-pound version. Lesson 3 is shooting for the crop, so one shot works everywhere. Lesson 4 walks through Canva, CapCut and Lightroom mobile, properly used. Lesson 5 makes you look like one brand without a designer. And lesson 6 is a repeatable twenty-minute shoot that feeds a fortnight of posts.
Take the aspect ratios Instagram's feed accepts. They're on screen now, with the date we last checked them. Every spec in this module is verified weekly, so you frame for the shape that'll actually show.
By the end, you can frame a shot in three seconds, light it with what's in the room, and keep every post looking like it came from the same place.
6 lessons. About 55 minutes. Level 1, module 5. Start with Composition: The Five Rules That Actually Matter.
What’s inside
- 01Composition: The Five Rules That Actually Matter
The small number of framing decisions that separate a phone snap from a photo people stop for — and how to make them in three seconds. · 9 min
- 02Lighting: The Free Version and the Fifty-Pound Version
How to read and shape natural light, what to buy when daylight runs out, and the lighting mistakes that instantly mark content as amateur. · 9 min
- 03Shooting for the Crop
Why you should frame for the shape of the platform before you press record, and a shoot-once-use-everywhere method for aspect ratios. · 8 min
- 04Three Free Tools, Properly Used
A working route through Canva, CapCut and Lightroom mobile — what each is actually for, and the handful of features that do most of the work. · 10 min
- 05Looking Like One Brand, Without a Designer
Colour, type and logo decisions a non-designer can make in an evening — and the template system that keeps every future post on-brand. · 9 min
- 06A Repeatable Shoot You Can Run in Twenty Minutes
One fixed setup for products, food and people — the shot list, the order of operations, and how one session feeds a fortnight of posts. · 10 min
