FREE STANDARD SHIPPING, ALWAYS
Take Off Your Apple Watch (and 14 Other Little Photo Tips)
Published 8/12/26
Here's a thing that happens all the time: you take a sweet photo, you love it, and months later it shows up in your photo book, where you finally notice the Apple Watch. Or the paper towel roll. Or the TV paused on a cooking show in the background.
None of these things ruin a photo. But they're all so easy to fix in the two seconds before you press the button, and you only ever notice them after. So consider this your two-second checklist. Fifteen little tips, none of which require a real camera or any actual photography skill.
Before you're in the photo
- Take off your Apple Watch. Nothing time-stamps an otherwise timeless photo like a smartwatch. Your grandkids will be able to carbon-date the picture. Slip it off, or at least turn the face to the inside of your wrist.
- Sunglasses off your head, AirPods out of your ears. Both of these hide in plain sight. You will not see them at the time. You will always see them in the print.
- Empty your pockets. Phones and keys create mystery rectangles and lumps in every standing photo. Hand them to whoever's not in the shot.
- Check your wrists. Hair ties, silicone bracelets, the hospital band you keep forgetting to cut off. Small stuff, but it reads.
Before you press the button
- Wipe your lens. This is the single most useful tip on this list. Half of what people call "bad lighting" is actually a lens with a thumbprint on it. Wipe it on your shirt. Every time.
- Do a background sweep. Look past the people for one second: counter clutter, Amazon boxes, laundry baskets, an open closet door. Kick it out of frame or take two steps to the left.
- Turn the TV off. A dark TV screen is a big black hole in your living room photos. A paused TV is worse, because now the photo has a co-star.
- Watch for cords. Charging cables have a way of snaking across the floor of otherwise lovely photos. Future you will wonder why nobody moved it. Be the person who moves it.
- Shoot from eye level or slightly above. Photos taken from below flatter exactly no one. Especially with kids, get down to their height — the difference is immediate.
- Take it both ways. One horizontal, one vertical. Vertical fills a phone screen; horizontal often fits prints and photo book layouts better. Give yourself the option.
When people are involved
- Count to three, take three. Someone always blinks. Taking three in a row costs nothing and saves the shot. (This is different from taking forty — you don't need forty.)
- Don't say "smile." Say something ridiculous instead. Ask the kids what the dog is thinking about. The laugh you get beats the smile you asked for, every time.
- Get one where nobody looks at the camera. Everyone looking at each other, or at the baby, or at the cake. Those tend to be the ones that end up framed.
- Hand your phone to someone. If you're the family photographer, you're probably in almost none of the photos. Your kids will want pictures with you, not just the ones you took. Hand it over, get in the frame, and accept that the framing will be a little off. It doesn't matter.
- Actually do something with the photos. The best photo tip is the boring one: a great photo that lives in your camera roll with 40,000 others might as well not exist. Print it, put it in a photo book, hang it up. That's when you'll notice the Apple Watch — but if you've read this far, you already took it off.
Because the little stuff is only little until it's printed. And the good stuff deserves to be printed.
Related Products:
Other Blogs You May Like: