the starfish was bright and welcoming

First of all, yay for phone photography! Having a camera in your pocket all the time is a great way to capture lovely things that you see and also to help you look at the world like a photographer all the time. I love having the opportunity to take a picture of something there and then rather than thinking "I should come back here with my camera".

No matter what camera you're using, the basics of making a good image are the same. There are LOADS of really useful tutorials on DA that can help you with stuff like composition. I ran a quick search for 'basics' in Resources and Stock Images > Tutorials > Photography and there's a heap of stuff to get you started at www.deviantart.com/browse/all/…

I haven't used a Droid Razor HD before so I Googled it. The reviews I read said the camera isn't great, but a photographer can make an interesting and appealing image with any tools, and it's unclear from reviews what standard the reviewer is comparing something to. Ignoring for a moment the physical parts of the camera in the phone, if you're not keen on the software part, the actual camera app, you may be able to download an alternative to play with. Have a hunt for some free camera apps for Android and see what you can find.

So, to the photo itself. I would've either moved closer to the subject or, if the phone's camera wouldn't focus close-up (some of them have difficulties with that), I'd have cropped the image to just the flower so any distracting bits and pieces in the background were removed.

There's often a difficulty with automatic settings in finding the right exposure for an entire image, so when there's lots of brightness going on in the background (it looks like a sunny day) it can result in problems with the software deciding on the right exposure for the actual subject of the image and you can end up with colour and detail looking quite flat in the photo compared to how they look in the flesh.

The flower looks slightly unsharp too. Flowers outside can be really fiddly to photograph because the slightest breeze or motion near them can cause movement which stops the image being completely in focus. The other thing that can cause problems is that it can be really hard to hold a phone perfectly still to take a photo. I totally struggle with that, compared to holding my much bigger and heavier dSLR steady. You can get tripods made specially for phones and they're pretty inexpensive, so that might be an option if you want to get into droidography a bit more.

I don't want to ramble on for more than the 400-and-something words I've already rambled on for, so if you'd like recommendations for camera apps, or even mobile editing apps, for Android phones hit me up with a note and I'll send you a few links.