Symmetry Photography on a Samsung Galaxy: Find and Shoot It

Perfectly aligned symmetry photos are all about lining up the centre of your scene with the centre of your frame. It all boils down to the position you take, how straight you hold your Galaxy and making use of Samsung’s in-built level.

Deviations that you wouldn’t normally notice in a standard photo become glaringly obvious when you’re going for perfect symmetry.

Four kinds of symmetry to look for

• Mirror symmetry: elements on one side of a frame duplicate the elements on the other side, like looking down the aisle of a church or photographing the façade of a building.
• Reflection symmetry: the calm surface of a lake or a reflective glass wall recreates the image, but in reverse, where top becomes bottom and bottom becomes top.
• Radial symmetry: elements repeat, but are arranged around a central point, similar to shooting upwards at a spiral staircase.
• Repeating symmetry: similar elements recur, for example, a series of identical balconies. Our patterns and textures guide has more on repetition.

Centring the subject leads to a symmetrical composition, according to Nikon. That's the one situation where the middle of the frame beats the rule of thirds, because the balance of the two halves is the subject.

Shooting a symmetrical photo, step by step

1. 1

   Turn on the grid and level

   Switch on grid lines (on Galaxy S25/S26 go to Composition guide under General in Camera settings, which Samsung says enables level and grid lines; on Galaxy A-series phones it’s just called Grid lines; if you’re using One UI 9 you can enable/disable level and grid lines separately).

2. 2

   Find the axis

   Walk sideways until you’re standing in the centre of the space. Tiles or ceiling/wall divisions can be helpful to get dead centre.

3. 3

   Choose the lens

   Use the default 1x camera in most situations (ultrawide may be useful for cramped interiors).

4. 4

   Hold the phone square

   Make sure your Galaxy is nice and level, as tilting upwards to include tall buildings for instance will result in converging verticals.

5. 5

   Centre the axis in the frame

   There’s no centre grid line, but using the centre of the centre grid square should help. Also check objects are divided similarly by either side grid line.

6. 6

   Steady the phone and shoot

   Prop your Galaxy against a wall/pillar/windowsill etc and use the self timer or volume button to take the shot to avoid camera shake. Take a couple of shots, moving just a few cm each time.

7. 7

   Check at full size

   Check your shots in Gallery zoomed in, as it’s easier to see if anything’s crooked at the edges of a photo.

Which lens suits which kind of symmetry

Distortion: Samsung’s Galaxy S phones have a wide-angle lens which according to Samsung’s own user guide may result in a slight distortion of images. In practice this matters most when you’re taking pictures of symmetrical objects.

Focal length: GSMArena puts the equivalent focal length of recent Galaxy S phones’ cameras at around 13mm (ultrawide), 23-24mm (main camera), 67mm and 111mm (telephoto lenses).

Use the telephoto (when available) for fronts of buildings. This allows you to stand further away but zoom in optically to fill the frame, keeping your phone level and avoiding converging verticals.

On A-series phones, which have no telephoto lens, stand further away and crop in post.

Reflections in water and glass

Get the phone (and the lens, particularly) as close to the water as you possibly can, as it will make the reflection appear closer to a mirror image. Aim for completely flat water, and early morning (before the wind picks up) is often best.

Aim to have the waterline bisecting the frame for maximum symmetry. Expose for the sky (reflections are usually slightly darker, and this can be fixed in post-processing by brightening the bottom half of the image). The exposure monitor in Pro mode on the Galaxy S26 will show overexposed areas in the preview image, which is helpful for bright skies. Our water reflections guide covers puddles and lakes in more detail.

Radial symmetry and spiral staircases

The classic example of radial symmetry would be to stand in the middle of a spiral staircase and take a photo looking straight up. Using your ultrawide camera would help to get the whole effect. Centre-align the centre of the spiral with the centre box of your rule of thirds grid.

It can be difficult to see what you’re photographing if you’re holding your phone horizontally above your head, so consider taking a few photos using your phone’s burst mode (according to Samsung’s Galaxy S26 user guide, you can activate this mode by swiping the shutter button to the edge of your screen and keeping it pressed down). Our perspective guide has more on shooting straight up and straight down.

Straightening and tidying in the edit

For radial images a square crop may be appropriate and can be achieved by choosing Ratio. In the Gallery editor’s Rotate/crop tool (icon looks like an arrow with a square), Adjust angle can be used to level the horizon. The vertical axis can be adjusted to correct converging verticals (lines leaning inwards). Options available are described on Samsung’s support page.

Pinch and drag to apply perspective corrections in Snapseed’s Perspective tool. Any gaps can be corrected using edge healing (explained on Google’s help page). If having either a bin or a sign ruins the match for you, our Object Eraser guide will tell you how to get rid of them.

Symmetry mistakes to avoid

• When shooting tall buildings, keeping the phone tilted upwards. This will make the vertical lines converge at the top.
• When using the ultrawide lens in big spaces (think wide halls with pillars), the things closest to the edge of the frame (people, pillars, etc.) get distorted and stretched out.
• When you’re standing dead centre (think of shooting down the middle of a street), but there’s a car parked on one side only.
• When you’re shooting down a long hall/corridor/street/roadway, standing a step to the left or right (this way, you’ll have more of one wall than the other in frame) instead of on the centre axis (this axis divides the photo into two equal halves).
• When you try to centre the axis/symmetry in images that would’ve looked better composed along the thirds.

Lines leading to the centre of a picture add greatly to its symmetry, and this point is sufficiently covered in our leading lines guide. Special treatment of buildings is discussed in our architecture guide.