In today’s article, I would like to share with you the 10 worst photographic mistakes I’ve ever made in my life as a photographer, and while these are mistakes I happily overcaly overcaly many years ago, I still feel pain every time I think about the hundreds of photos I once lost because of one of these mistakes.
I warn you, this is a long and detailed article, surely you can enjoy it. As you read, consider the situation in your particular case, ask yourself how it fell into a similar error and how you could correct it.
Ready? Start
When I bought my first SLR camera I made the mistake of buying a kit with 2 lenses, 18-55mm and 55-200mm, at that moment my reasoning was very simple, with two lenses I could take practically any type of photograph, from 18 mm to 200 mm What happened, I thought?
The first few weeks I had fun with both lenses and right now they’re in my secondary photography backpack, where I pick up all the stuff I don’t use.
When you spend time with your cameras you realize that to take photos that are worth showing and sharing you need a specialized goal, the goals that the dealer places you in the kit are the most basic and simple that you will never find. very good lenses in a camera kit, which you have to buy separately. They’re very good and in high demand.
What was my mistake? Buy 2 lenses included with the camera, which eventually turned out to be simple and I haven’t played in years. If I’d known, I’d have bought the camera without a lens, or maybe with a single lens, maybe the 18-55mm, and saved the rest of my budget to get a good specialized target.
Today I have several of these lenses that have meant a radical change in the way I take pictures (the lenses I recommend, here).
My first tripod I bought it in a second-hand store, it weighed less than 200 grams, it was a long, thin tripod, practically plastic, I bought it at a time in my life where I didn’t know what to look for on a tripod. I found it helpful that you could bend to 20 or 30 centimeters, very comfortable to wear, I thought. It was the worst buying of photographic accessories of my life. Every time the wind blew, my tripod moved like a tree leaf. It cost me cheap, but it was the worst money ever invested in my life. I didn’t even bother selling it to another fool. I would have been ashamed.
I threw it in a trash can in a clean place and never heard from him again.
If you think filters are a consumable accessory, you’re wrong. There are several types of filters, each designed to give some effect to the photograph, but on that, they have another “essential” utility, which is to protect the lens. I made this mistake with my 50mm f/1. 4 lens (the king of lenses), which had long been un filterless, this allowed his outer lens to capture dust, dirt and fingerprints, every time I put a cloth to clean it, I scratched it deeper, it’s a disaster.
If I’d put a filter on the first day, your lens would be like new right now.
Of course, I never made the same mistake again. I’m trying to filter all my glasses.
If you’re buying a filter, two tips
In my case, I buy them in amazon’s photography accessories section, they have a variety of them.
I won’t be one of those fans who will tell you to take all your photos on RAW, I am currently taking some of my photos in JPG, the mistake I made at first is that I photographed everything, absolutely everything, in JPG. Problem?That in front of the computer I did not have much space to process, if at the time of the shooting I had forgotten to adjust the white balance and had a photo too bluish or too orange, I had to bear it because nothing could be done.
The day I changed my camera settings to RAW, i opened up a whole new world of photo possibilities. Certainly, when I am behind the viewfinder, I take care of the photo in every detail, I try to get it out of the but if something goes wrong, I have the peace of mind of knowing that later, in post-processing, I will be able to play with certain settings as I wish. It’s like I can travel back in time, taking the picture. , doing it again.
Does this mean that all your photos must be made in RAW?Please don’t even think about it. The reason you shouldn’t take all your photos exclusively on RAW is that RAW requires processing. A JPG photo is a photo ready to share, send, display and consume. A RAW is a raw file, forcing a person to stand in front of the computer and spend time processing that file. If there are 4 photos, nothing happens, you process the 4 RAW and that’s it, but can you imagine having to process 400 photos in RAW one by one?
In my case, my camera allows me to shoot in RAW and JPG at the same time, so I usually set it up like this, this way, when I download the contents of the memory card to the computer, I use the default JPG. If a JPG photo doesn’t convince me, I’m looking for RAW and I’m working with it. The ones that were already fine in JPG, I delete the RAW because I don’t really need them.
I managed to delete hundreds of photos by judging them at first glance only on the small screen of my camera, many of these deleted photos were really bad and second to none, but I also had to delete valid photos, which, although they have some small flaws. , could surely be corrected/improved later in the post-processing phase.
When you’re taking the photo, you don’t have a big enough screen or you don’t have time to evaluate the photos and see which ones are good and which need to be deleted. Deleting photos right away, by impulse, is a mistake that sometimes I don’t even realize. Maybe I had in my hands what could have been my best picture, and I erased it by impulse.
These days, after each shot, I try to browse the photos to see if I’m okay or if I need to change something, but don’t delete the photos anymore. I always have time to do it later, when I’m in front of the computer Do I think I’m making better decisions there?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m not asking you to stay away from your family or become an antisocial being, what happens is that at some point we combine our love of photography with a walk with a friend or family member, or a group of them. 90% of the time is generally deastrous, both for photography and for our social relationships.
Your friends, family or partner, although they respect your love and also appreciate the beautiful photos that make you with your camera, will always get tired of waiting for you while you stop to photograph this monument or shrub. who does not photograph, becomes eternal. You, who are trying to take the picture, are overwhelmed. To take a decent photo, you need to do a first test, a second shot, review, crop, maybe a better focus, change the shutter speed, adjust the camera well until you get the right photo, while your partner loses patience.
If you want to enjoy photography, you can be accompanied and whatever you want but try to book time alone with the landscape, the street, the monument or anything else you want to photograph, if it’s a sunrise enjoy it and get up early, escape with your backpack and enjoy the peace of your loneliness, just you and your camera.
At first I was taking the photos with the camera and so they stayed, later in my life as a photographer I had a stage similar to that of ‘teen’, that’s when I discovered Photoshop, Adobe Camera RAW and the wonderful world of post-processing and editing. I discovered a small adjustment with which I could make the colors of the photo brighter, called “saturation”. I also discovered the vignette effect. I got carried away, and without realizing it, I began to produce saturated skin photographs, full of sticky colors, strong, squeaky and exaggeratedly cut corners.
There is nothing wrong with increasing or reducing saturation or vignette, but in my case I did it upstairs, the problem is that now that I look at them with perspective and regret I can’t go back. Why? Read the following error.
Remember that in analog photography, the lab would take your photos on photo paper and return the film or film to you, its usefulness was that, if you then wanted to take more photos, you still had the original available.
The same goes for digital photography, whether you’re shooting RAW for post-processing and getting JPG, or filming directly into JPG, the first time you import the contents of a memory card to your computer or hard drive, first create a folder, call it “original” and place all the content. Then make a copy of the entire folder and edit the copies. When saving copies with new settings and changes, use them if desired, but the “original” folder should never be deleted.
I spent many years editing photos and backing up the original, worst of all, at that time the photos seemed very good, it’s only when a few years have passed and you look at those same photos again, you realize that you don’t. You like something about them and you want to change it, even if it’s just to experiment, see what comes out of it. If you haven’t kept the original, forget it.
Keep in mind that we’re no longer talking about backing up, I take for granted, dear reader, you have backups of all your photos, right?Here, the problem is not only to make backups, but to make them in a very organized way. There’s no point in having photos swarming in different folders, here and there, some on the computer, some on Grand Aunt’s iPad, and a few others on USB that don’t know where it is.
You must have all your photos organized under a logical folder structure and have exactly the same folder structure, with exactly the same photo content, in a backup, this way you know where you have all your photos and you know that if something happens to it in a copy, you have another full copy of absolutely everything.
In my early years I lost a lot of photos because of lack of organization. You could ask me for a picture and I couldn’t tell you exactly where I had it. I’ve followed a strict backup policy for years. I have my photo content on my main computer and another full, identical copy on a remote server (Dropbox).
A mistake that I realized little by little, and that I gradually tried to correct: photograph with the eyes, instead of the soul. Photography is a form of communication with a very important visual component, but in the end it remains a medium. My first photographs were about the visual, the first thing my eyes saw, I dedicated myself to the representation of aesthetics, everything beautiful was photographic for me. Point. My photographs represented colorful colors, shapes pleasing to the eye. And then the case is over.
Over time you discover a much more interesting, entertaining and stimulating photograph, and no, I don’t mean to take deep photographs, they don’t have to be revolutionary or philosophical photos, or they don’t have to change the world. But I mean a photograph “with content”, a photograph that, in addition to color and shape, brings emotion, even alters the heart rate of the one who sees it, a photograph that tells a story, conveys a message. seduces and captivates the viewer.
It is photographing with the soul
I hope you enjoyed this reading. If this is the case, give it a Facebook Like, Tweet, or Google recommendation.
Good photography!