Photography is a complex undertaking that requires a combination of technical skill, creative vision and business savvy (if you’re a pro) to find success, making it easy to fall into the trap. could cause you to derail. Here are five small mistakes photographers make that can negatively affect their experience, image, or career.
Connect emotions with images
Photography can be a deeply personal goal for many of us, and there’s nothing wrong with that. In fact, it can give us the passion and motivation to constantly push ourselves to become better at our craft. After all, we should all enjoy the image-making process. If not, why are we doing this in the first place?
However, this can be a double-edged sword. This becomes a problem when we let our emotions overwhelm our ability to objectively judge the quality of our images. For example, suppose there is a park near where you grew up, a park in which you have made countless memories. It may not be noticeable or significantly different from thousands of other similar parks, but for you, it is special.
Now, let’s say you capture a beautiful sunrise there one day. To you, that photo can be really special, one that evokes emotions and memories of an important place. But for other viewers who don’t share those experiences, it’s just a landscape image. And so, if you want to share it with the wider world or sell it, it needs to stand on its own, which means you need to be acutely aware of your own biases when judging it.
I have been guilty of this for a long time. I let photos of the people I hold dear or the places where I hold memories to lose sight of the quality of the images and that is detrimental to both my professional position and my growth as a person. is a creator. I ended up solving it by making a simple rule: if I have to interpret an image to justify it, it’s not worth showing outside of my personal collection.
Working for low wages is unsustainable
This is one of the things that a lot of newer photographers love. To be clear, this does not mean that you should be stubborn about accepting nothing but the highest price until you have reached it. Instead, this is aimed at photographers who value themselves at levels that are simply unsustainable.
People do this in the hope that they will build a customer base that will be loyal to them when they later raise the price to a more reasonable level. The problem with this is that the customers you get by offering basement rates are not likely to be loyal to you. Instead, these could be customers who simply shop for the lowest price, and when you no longer offer that price, they’ll turn to whoever buys.
Instead, you should aim to start at a price commensurate with your skills and experience (which is why you should wait until you’ve built a good skill set to start charging) but sustainable, then enhance them as your skills, portfolio, and experience grow. Better to have five loyal customers than 50 who just stay with you because you’re the cheapest on the block. That’s way less work.
Gear
The old classic. However, it still makes sense. This is not to say that the device is not important. That’s a huge oversimplification. The truth is that equipment is important. Better equipment can produce better image quality, make editing easier, and can even help you get shots that wouldn’t be possible.
However, we tend to make two mistakes regarding this. First, we overestimate how often we actually need new equipment to be able to get a certain picture. More often than not, what we really need is to work on our technique. Be brutally honest with yourself. Have you really unleashed your camera’s full potential, or will a little practice solve the problem?
The second mistake we often make is overestimating how much the image quality improves. In general, more expensive cameras and lenses produce better images; No one disputes that. The question is: how much does it matter? If you normally just post on Instagram or the web, you don’t need large numbers of megapixels or clinically sharp lenses. Better picture quality is always nice, and a higher resolution to play with can be helpful, but think twice about where your images end up and whether they really benefit from the high resolution. larger sensor, etc. Ask yourself if your image has- the processing style actually requires more dynamic range.
Shooting a gun to get someone else’s approval
Social media has been a real driver of this phenomenon. Instead of discovering their interests and developing a unique creative voice, photographers chase trends and popularity. Find any popular Instagram hashtag or location to see what I mean. Or, check Repeat Insta.
If you are a hobbyist, the only person you need to answer is yourself. And you’ll find photography a lot more satisfying if you shoot and edit it the way you like it instead of running after likes and followers. There’s nothing wrong with using competition as a learning tool, but make sure it doesn’t turn into a substitute for developing a creative voice.
If you’re a pro, guess what? You are still not replying to random people on social networks, just your customers and yourself. And while staying up to date with trends is just as required by a client, at the end of the day, they’ll hire you because they’re drawn to your unique creative voice, which is why so many people. Many experts preach the importance of personal projects.
Shortcuts
Henri Cartier-Bresson says, “The first 10,000 pictures are your worst photo. It took a long time to take 10,000 pictures. It takes a long time to become a proficient photographer and it can be frustrating. This is when people are tempted by keyboard shortcuts. There is a reason that so many famous photographers sell presets.
The problem is that shortcuts like purchased presets rarely produce the results you want and worse, they don’t teach you how to view the image and know how to get it where you want it, which leaves you dependent into someone else. tools instead of your own skills.
However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t any legitimate shortcuts out there. For example, editing operations can make you more productive by automating tedious repetitive tasks. But before you consider any kind of shortcut, you should ask yourself two things: “Do I think it would be possible to do what this shortcut does without it, and can I do it manually?” are not?” Only if you can answer “yes” to both should you use keyboard shortcuts.
Inference
These are five common mistakes that I have seen in others and which I have committed many times. Did you notice any others?
