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Behind the Lens: The Secrets of Great Smartphone Photos
How the next generation of smartphone cameras featuring Snapdragon technology is empowering even novice photographers to create professional-level photos and videos of our favorite places to preserve.
Getting the perfect travel shot has historically meant lugging a camera with multiple lenses, but carrying a bag of gear to a mountain lake or remote beach isn’t always ideal. Luckily, a new generation of smartphones promise to change that with a single setup that comes close to doing it all, thanks in large part to the underlying technology powering the phones: the Snapdragon® 8 Mobile Platform.
In October, Condé Nast Traveler sent two serious photography buffs to New York’s Sagamore Resort, a 140-year-old luxury getaway along Lake George, New York, to see what they could capture using a Samsung Galaxy S22 Ultra phone, powered by Snapdragon technology. With a host of photo-specific upgrades to the platform—not to mention 8K Video and 4K HDR10+ Video Capture modes—the pair proved that the best travel camera may be the one that’s already in your hand.
Here they share tips on how you can use your smartphone camera to take pro-level images, along with insight into the technology from our experts at WIRED Brand Lab. The photos are certain to summon a bit of wanderlust to snap a few pics of your own—which in turn may inspire others to preserve places like these.
Bree Rose is a professional photographer from New York City who shares her globe-trotting photos with over 440,000 followers as @eyeofshe. She’s been everywhere from the Italian Dolomites to the Jordanian desert to capture stunning images, but this trip gave her an opportunity to shine a spotlight on a landscape closer to home—while also experimenting outside of her traditional full-camera set-up. “It was a fun experience changing up my tools,” she says. “I loved being able to shoot great imagery with a lightweight phone.”
Jeffrey Riley, @jeffrey.dng from Cincinnati, honed his craft shooting around his neighborhood, focusing on profiles and close-up shots, mostly using a smartphone camera. In the process, he became a smartphone camera enthusiast and Snapdragon Insider*, and the trip to upstate New York allowed him to further refine his approach while getting outside of his creative comfort zone. “It was absolutely stunning to see all of the different fall colors,” says Riley. “Being there and shooting photos really makes you want to protect it, to have those places exist without being tampered with.”
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Lake George, NY
Cannon Point
Sagamore Resort
Bixby Beach Road
Rockwell Falls Park
Trout Lake
Green Island Nature Trails
Click the photos to expand and explore the area
Cannon Point
A picturesque waterfall near Lake George
43°33'32.9"N 73°38'38.6"W
The photo was taken with
Camera Mode: 10x Optical Zoom
By Jeffrey Riley
With many zoom photos, far away objects can easily get overexposed and lose color, especially when light is bouncing off water or it’s coming from a high mid-day sun, as it is here. “Normally in circumstances like this, things would get blown out relatively quickly,” says Riley. “But with this phone and the Snapdragon platform, I was really happy about how it turned out. It did a significantly better job than any camera I’ve had my hands on.”
WIRED Brand Lab Insight: With an 18-bit ISP and the ability to capture 4 more stops than the previous generation Snapdragon, the platform allows you to capture brightly colored images in even the most challenging scenarios, like a zoom shot in the middle of a bright afternoon. The lighter and darker portions of the image are evened out automatically, using the details of up to 30 images the camera captures near-instantaneously.
Sagamore Resort
Luxurious Hotel Grounds with Lake George as the backdrop
43°33'32.9"N 73°38'38.6"W
The photo was taken with
Camera Mode: 108MP Photo Capture
By Bree Rose
"I love this feature because it utilizes all the pixels in the main camera to create a well detailed image. You get so much more quality—and detail—in these photos. I was like, 'Wow, that's what my fingernail looks like up close huh?'"
WIRED Brand Lab Insight: Even most professional cameras don’t have a 19-bit ISP, but with the new Qualcomm Spectra ISP, supported by the Snapdragon technology, you get four extra stops, vastly improving the camera’s dynamic range, allowing it to take better photos in both low light and overly bright conditions. Essentially, the camera extends the “golden hour” for photography to all day—and does the hard work of perfecting the exposure for you.
Bixby Beach Road
An idyllic stroll along Lake George
43°33'32.9"N 73°38'38.6"W
The photo was taken with
Camera Mode: 10x Optical Zoom
By Bree Rose
“With the zoom function on the Samsung Galaxy, changing lenses is a click of a button away,” she says. “I was pretty shocked with the detail I was able to pull from it, especially on the leaf shot, with the veins so visible.”
WIRED Brand Lab Insight: With the new Snapdragon platform, the big upgrade is an 18-bit ISP (from a 14-bit). That’s an astounding 4,096x increase in camera data, made possible by the processing core. The end result: exceptionally detailed and balanced photos, even in challenging conditions, like bright sun and a distant subject.
The photo was taken with
Camera Mode: Raw
By Bree Rose
Rose prefers to shoot in RAW mode, when the camera’s platform does not compress or process the image (or does so minimally). With the camera capturing more details—combined with an 18-bit ISP—the images are detailed. Here, Rose snapped the RAW image, then edited that image making the colors pop (swipe right). “You can edit the RAW file or let the phone help you capture a gorgeous image—making your workflow a lot faster,” she says
WIRED Brand Lab Insight: RAW images take up more space than JPEGs, but they retain more details, which photographers can then edit to achieve a look and tone they prefer. Most smartphones do not shoot in RAW, in part because of the large files. But with Snapdragon technology, RAW images are easy to use, as the processing capability can handle the larger files quickly.
Rockwell Falls Park
A picturesque waterfall near Lake George
43°33'32.9"N 73°38'38.6"W
The photo was taken with
Camera Mode: 108MP Photo Capture
By Bree Rose
“With the Samsung Galaxy, I felt like I could do everything that I could with my DSLR camera, which was really impressive,” says Rose. “And the detail you can capture with the main camera using the 108MP mode is insane. I was pretty shocked. There’s so much detail to these shots!”
WIRED Brand Lab Insight: Even most professional cameras don’t have a 19-bit ISP, but with the new Qualcomm Spectra ISP, supported by the Snapdragon technology, you get four extra stops, vastly improving the camera’s dynamic range, allowing it to take better photos in both low light and overly bright conditions. Essentially, the camera extends the “golden hour” for photography to all day—and does the hard work of perfecting the exposure for you.
Trout Lake
A starlit stroll by the water
43°33'32.9"N 73°38'38.6"W
The photo was taken with
Camera Mode: Night Mode
By Bree Rose
“My favorite part of the trip was shooting night photography,” says Rose. “I was able to shoot a 15-second exposure like I would with my large-format camera and capture the lake and the stars of the Milky Way. It was honestly incredible a smartphone camera was able to capture that.”
WIRED Brand Lab Insight: The camera is able to capture amazing night photography, in part, because the camera is powered by a multi-frame engine, automatically capturing and merging up to 30 images at once. It also still allows for time-lapse images, and together it translates into crisp images with no star trailing.
The photo was taken with
Camera Mode: Night Mode
By Jeffrey Riley
“This one took a little more work to do, but not a lot, and it was absolutely fantastic to capture,” says Riley. He propped his phone up, set it to 600 ISL, and let the camera do its magic. “It was absolutely amazing,” he says. “There's even a dedicated RAW mode, which gives you the ability to do color reproduction, change around the exposure, and even control the shutter speed during shooting, to freeze the subject in motion or other options like that. It basically has it all.”
WIRED Brand Lab Insight: The Spectra ISP has a dedicated low light engine that captures 30 images in one second and combines them automatically into one perfectly balanced picture. The Multi-frame Noise Reduction feature ensures that they’re crisp and full of detail.
Green Island Nature Trails
A short nature trail with towering trees
43°33'32.9"N 73°38'38.6"W
The photo was taken with
Camera Mode: Macro
By Bree Rose
Shooting in macro, getting the right point of focus, was both a bit of a challenge and super fun. “I was impressed with the camera’s capabilities—getting so close to the subject you could almost touch it,” she says. “With the macro lens, I focused on separating the subject from the background, utilizing that shallow depth of field to really hone in to a specific point.”
WIRED Brand Lab Insight: The camera achieves a balance in its photos through multiple advancements courtesy of Snapdragon technology, including computational High Dynamic Range (HDR) enhancements, which essentially uses multiple exposures to increase the details in both the photo’s shadows and highlights.
The photo was taken with
Camera Mode: Macro
By Jeffrey Riley
With the Snapdragon platform, Riley was able to capture multiple exposures that are combined into the final image, reducing image noise in the process, which is often essential on macro shots. “In the past, I definitely would have had to edit something like this, especially if I wanted to get rid of any kind of distortion,” says Riley. “But since the phone handles that, it makes it so much easier.”
WIRED Brand Lab Insight: The Snapdragon platform allows phones to capture a stunning 50 megapixels in each image through a 50MP Photo Capture mode. Used with a macro lens, it can create images loaded with detail, and allows zooming and recropping of photos while maintaining amazing high resolution.
Tips for Capturing Any Moment
Rose and Riley offered complementary skills and areas of focus on the trip—Rose often focusing on landscapes and Riley on close-up shots. “We could walk into the same place and basically see different frames than one another,” says Riley, “and the phone enabled us to be able to capture either viewpoint, whether hers was taking in the whole landscape or mine was getting very close to a flower.” Here, Rose shares her tried and true tips on how to best capture the moment.
Turn Bad Conditions Into a Good Photo Opportunity
Rose always makes the most of whatever the moment offers, because you never know what you’ll find. “If you’re in a location and maybe the weather is not favorable, just try anyway,” she says. During one of her days shooting in New York, the sky was gray and the leaves wet and drab, but the rain on the roads and leaves had a shine to them and allowed her to make those subjects pop more than usual. “The camera was able to help pull out colors,” she says, “and the result was a really great mood in the images.”
Include a Human Touch in Nature Shots
Rose likes to find human elements to feature in her nature shots, enabling the viewer to imagine themselves in the image. During one day at Lake George, she specifically framed a boat and boathouses in the image, even though they were on the far shore. “It would have been a beautiful image with just the colors of the trees, but adding something like a boat showcases more of a human element, something more relatable,” she says. “It’s very inviting.”
Use the Rule of Thirds to Frame Your Shot
For most images, Rose uses the rule of thirds, ensuring your focus in the shot takes up only a third of the image, leaving the remaining two-thirds of the frame more open to create a compelling composition. “Generally, I like to utilize just the rule of thirds,” Rose says. “I’ve found it's just more appealing to the eye.”
Use Yourself as the Human Touch in Images
When a human element isn’t already present in the image to make it more relatable to the viewer, Rose often just uses herself. While at Rockwell Falls Park, she wanted to take a photo of water reflecting a hillside, but she also wanted a human element in it. To capture it, she framed the image with her Samsung Galaxy phone, which was set on her backpack, delayed the shot by a few seconds, and then jumped in the right spot. “I just wanted to showcase a woman enjoying a gorgeous fall view,” she says. “I'm not blocking the image, you're still able to see what I'm seeing, but you're right next to me seeing it as well.”
Try to Find Nighttime Shots Lit Only by Stars
Taking moonlit shots at night can wash out your image. Instead, Rose tries to shoot on starry nights—and loves when an element like a lake can reflect the sky. At Trout Lake, a dock stretching out into the water provided both scale and a human element. “I was also able to find a human touch with the dock, so you can imagine yourself sitting by the water and enjoying the view,” she says. “It has a magical element to it.”
For both, it was also their first time in the Lake George area of New York. “It was stunning, so much color,” says Rose. “And I really enjoy showcasing these locations, because hopefully it makes people want to go experience them for themselves and then help preserve them. It's a very positive cycle, and I think photography really helps that.”
Snapdragon Insider Riley agrees. “Hopefully the images we captured inspire people to preserve more beautiful spots like this,” he says.
You can become a Snapdragon Insider too by following @SnapdragonOfficial on Instagram and @Snapdragon on Twitter. Post your own 'Shot on Snapdragon' photos to Instagram using #ShotOnSnapdragon, also follow and tag @SnapdragonOfficial
*Snapdragon Insiders is a community which brings together tech enthusiasts, content creators, and Snapdragon experts. It provides a space where like-minded enthusiasts can learn, interact with each other, and discuss all things Snapdragon.
Content sponsored by Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., a subsidiary of Qualcomm Incorporated.
Snapdragon is a product of Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries.