The best camera to use is the one you have with you. Youā€™ve heard it a million times, right?

Treat your phone just like you treat your camera

We keep our camera gear at the ready, donā€™t we? Itā€™s cleaned, batteries are charged and itā€™s in our bag and ready to grab when we need it.

Make sure you do the same with your phone. Itā€™s in our pocket, purse, bag and gets set down on counters, tables and who knows where else.

How clean does the lens stay? Take a look ā€” I bet there are fingerprints or smudges on the lens of your phone camera.

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Keep the battery charged

This has happened to me before. Iā€™m at an event, concert or out with friends and my phone is on its last bit of charge. Then something happens and I miss the photo because my phone died. This is easy enough to avoid but for some reason, we just forget to charge our phones or think itā€™s charged, grab it and head out.

Another easy fix is to carry a portable charger with you ā€” they are small enough to put in your purse or pocket.

Use a camera app

Some of the camera apps that are available help you to control more when youā€™re shooting with your phone. They allow you to set ISO, aperture and shutter speed as you would in your camera.

The Adobe Lightroom app allows you to take RAW photos directly from the app. Camera+, Cymera, Manual and VSCO are also highly ranked camera apps.

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Add editing apps to your phone

There are so many options for editing images directly on your phone these days it makes it easy to edit and post on the go. Adobe Lightroom, Snapseed and VSCO are just a few, though there are plenty more you can check out.

Keep some extra lenses for your phone on hand

There are little lenses you can clip over your phoneā€™s lens. They are fun to play with and add just a few more options for you to create with your phone camera. They range from a less expensive version for $25 to the olloclip which runs around $100. Wide-angle, fisheye, macro and zoom lenses are available.

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These are all just simple things you can do to make sure you’re always ready to get the shot with your phone.