We are all photographers now, with a phone in our pocket ready to capture life, love, and everything in between – which, quite often, is incredibly mundane, such as what we had for lunch. But how can you make sure you are taking the best possible pictures? Here, photographers share their top tips.

Use what you have to hand

“The best camera is the one in your hand,” says the Guardian photographer Sarah Lee. “How many of us have seen something that would make a wonderful photograph and had nothing to record it with? The good thing about a cameraphone is that you tend to have it on you.”

As a professional photographer, Lee tries to carry a Leica with her everywhere, “but sometimes I don’t have it and I’ll see a shot”. Luckily, phone cameras are pretty good these days. “Early phone photography was terrible,” she says. “It used to be a throwaway image. Now, you can get good, credible, high-resolution images.”

Don’t just point and click

“Take photos with care and consideration, whatever the camera in your hand,” says Lee. “If it is your phone, don’t just hold it up and point it at the scene and think that works. Try to consider the light, the composition, how you’re going to frame it. Give the camera in your phone the same respect that you would give any camera.”

Make the most of the tools available – if you want to

“I don’t really like that a lot of phones put in smart software to make the sky look better or do high dynamic range (HDR), because, as a photographer, I like to have control,” says Lee. “One thing that is really useful on an iPhone is, when you hold your finger on the screen while taking a picture, there is a yellow bar; you can play with exposure and think about the light.”