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Getting the perfect Instagram shot can be a challenge at the best of times, but it’s even tougher when you have a moving target. That’s the reality for guidebook author Lottie Gross, who’s spent the last couple of years writing books on dog-friendly holidays – and photographing Arty, her energetic Manchester terrier, for the covers.

“If I’m trying to take a picture, the dog is going to be unpredictable and moving,” says Gross. So most of the time she’s having to wrangle the dog with one hand and take photos with the other, all while trying not to drop her phone. When she does finally manage to line up the shot, her usual phone is often too slow to capture a clear image. And as Arty has a black coat with tan markings, photographing him in low-light conditions adds an extra dimension to the challenge. “Often a phone camera can’t cope with my very dark-coloured dog in a very dark place,” Gross says. “In a cute, cosy, dark pub, I just can’t take any pictures because they’ll look rubbish.”

As a backup, Gross often travels with a compact camera, which allows her to adjust the shutter speed for those more difficult shots and challenging lighting conditions. “But sometimes it’s just not practical, so I’ll use my phone instead,” says Gross. “With the dog, I need to be as low-maintenance as possible.” That means no light panels, no tripod and no extra gear.

How AI smartphone cameras improve pet photography
To address those challenges, Gross tested out the new Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra, which is packed with AI-powered features designed to help users capture better photos and videos. Using the Photo Assist¹ feature, Samsung’s post-production suite for images that uses AI to help the subject of your photographs stand out, she was able to edit out Arty’s chunky dog lead for a more chic Instagram aesthetic. Sitting within this suite is the Creative Studio², which uses generative AI to transform your own photographs or create new images. Gross used it to turn her photographs into beautiful watercolours.

Behind the scenes, the phone is using AI for scene selection – automatically hopping on to macro mode when the camera is placed close to an object, for example – and enhancing colour and clarity after a photo is taken. All features designed to make taking beautiful photographs faster and easier without you needing to choose the settings.

How travel creators use Instagram to grow an audience
Despite being a guidebook author for more than a decade, Gross is relatively new to content creation. For much of 2025, she was on the road with Arty, travelling around the UK in a caravan and exploring different parts of Europe while researching dog-friendly hotels and activities for her upcoming guidebooks. By sharing snippets of their journey on Instagram, she’s managed to grow her following to more than 14,500 in just over a year, becoming a micro-influencer in the process.

“It was very much a surprise and an accident,” says Gross. “I started making videos to try and sell more books – I wasn’t doing it with a view to becoming a content creator, I was just sharing fun videos.”

While she doesn’t want to transition into content creation full-time, this little boost has pushed her into creating more content for social media. Now she shares photos and reels on caravanning and travelling with dogs a couple of times a week. “It’s a really nice, complementary thing to do, because it works to promote my books, but then it also gives me an opportunity to earn a bit of extra cash on the side,” she says.

For Gross, two features of the new Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra stood out the most for her content creation needs.

“I was really impressed with the low-light capabilities,” she says. “I was in a very dark restaurant and worried that all the pictures would end up coming out really blurry because the dog was moving around constantly. The phone actually did quite a good job and I got some great pictures of him.”

To create those brilliantly bright, low-noise photos, the S26 can capture 30 images in seconds using the 200-megapixel camera. It then uses AI to combine them, automatically selecting the best frames for the final image. But perhaps the best thing is that the phone is built with sensors that automatically switch the camera into Nightography³ mode in low-light conditions. “That bit has definitely made my life a lot easier,” says Gross.

How AI video stabilisation makes smoother Instagram reels
The other feature she loves is the phone’s video stabilising feature, Super Steady Video⁴, which requires a Samsung login. “For Instagram, that really, really helps,” says Gross. “I do a lot of videos of me and the dog walking and they can look a bit shaky sometimes, so it’s really cool to have this [capability] that makes my videos look really smooth and professional, even though they’re not.”

To properly put the stabilising feature to the test, Gross even went on a run with Arty and filmed the journey. “If you imagine filming a running video on a normal phone, it’s going to look really wobbly,” says Gross. “Whereas when I watched this back, [the footage] was so smooth it looked like it was from a drone!”

For Gross, all of these enhancements mean photographing Arty on-the-go is so much easier, even when she’s only got one free hand. “I would quite happily switch to this phone for all of my content creation needs – it’s just got so many more features and it’s very intuitive,” she says.

Buy the Galaxy S26 Ultra now

^{1. Requires network connection and Samsung account login. A visible watermark is overlaid on the saved image to indicate it was generated by Galaxy AI. Accuracy of output not guaranteed.}

^{2. Requires network connection and Samsung account login. Accuracy of output not guaranteed.}

^{3. Results may vary depending on light condition, subject and/or shooting conditions.}

^{4. Super Steady results may vary depending on editing method and/or shooting conditions.}