Image by Mihai Paraschiv
Improving your photography skills requires a great deal of patience and basically pushing your limits continually. But in order to do so, you have to become aware of your mistakes and the compromises you are making during your creative process.
When you are out photographing, whatever it may be, there are lots of things that you can do wrong, and most of them due to being a little lazy or inexperienced judging the situation.
The whole idea of “improving” all aspects of your photography, is to learn from your mistakes and push yourself and your limits further and further. Never stop doing that.
In photography, however, there are several things that you have probably done so far, and you are probably still doing which kind of impair your progress.
Before we go further into this article, do you know and use Lightroom well, already and want to bring your skills up to where they should be OR have no experience with this piece of post processing software?
In either case, check out this eBook Guide: LIGHTROOM POWER USER – “Learn Tips & Tricks to Improve your Editing Skills and Speed Up your Lightroom Workflow”.
1 of 3 – Common Excuses: I’ll Just Fix It In Post
No, you won’t. This excuse is to blame for most of the “almost successful” photos. And by almost I mean having one or two details which break the photo and render it average or below average, instead of it being a great shot.
The problem lies far beneath the actual ability to fix the issue in post. Yes, you might be able to fix it perhaps 30-40% of the time, and yes it might turn out great.
But the real problem is simply not setting up the scene properly.
Getting everything right in camera not only gives you better overall results, it also provides a great deal of keeper shots. This practice will eventually help you with planning the shoots better, having better attention to detail and basically help you become more professional when you are doing your job.
Imagine how it would look from the client/model side when you miss so much stuff and just rely on Photoshop to make up for it?
Of course, on the other hand, if you do everything right, the effect will be visible for the client and/or model, and it will boost your confidence as well, thus generally improving your result and cutting down on time.
Photo by Joel Bedford
No, it is not. If you start giving yourself these types of common excuses for lowering your standards, you will actually become worse at your photography.
The mindset that allows you to do compromises because you are lazy or you don’t care enough will eventually ruin your shots, affect your overall performance, and therefore damage your reputation.
Your audience will not accept good enough, either it is the best that you can do, or it isn’t.
These days because everybody has access to a decent camera (do not underestimate smartphones), you have enormous competition, and in fact every photographer does.
If you start making compromises in your shots, you’ll just blend in with all the average photographers and probably stay there until you decide to up your game.
If you don’t make compromises then, if you take care of every detail and give the best you can humanly do, the result will be obvious. It might take some time at the beginning, but eventually, the hard work will pay out.
You’ve guessed it, you won’t. Next time around, the circumstances will be different. Light will be different, weather will be different, your mindset will be different. In fact, you might not even go there again.
You can’t predict the future, you can’t know what that particular scene will look like next time when you are around, you don’t even know if you’ll be still doing photography then.
So whenever the thought of “I’ll get it next time” passes through your mind, grab your camera, your gear, and get the shot. Even if it fails, just do it. As mentioned before, it is all about the mindset, act now, be prepared, and push your limits.
This might sound like a cheap motivational speech, but when it comes to photography, there is no better time than right now. At least now in the digital age it is easy, there is no film to spend, each shot doesn’t cost you extra money (okay it does, but it is insignificant), which means there is basically no excuse why you shouldn’t take the shot now.
Nobody’s stopping you from trying again next time when you are around, but shoot now as well, so you don’t have to go through the “I should have taken the shot then, it would be better” notion.
Excuses are a bad thing, obviously. So it’s time to stop making them and go shoot. It might be challenging in the beginning, just to get used to ignoring those nagging excuses, but once you do, there will be no stopping you. I promise!
Naturally, there will be many more excuses than these three mentioned here, but the principle is the same: once you catch yourself making an excuse about not shooting or making compromises when shooting, do exactly the opposite.
And after a short period of time, you’ll notice the results yourself.
Before we finish, do you know and use Lightroom well, already and want to bring your skills up to where they should be OR have no experience with this piece of post processing software?
In either case, check out this eBook Guide: LIGHTROOM POWER USER – “Learn Tips & Tricks to Improve your Editing Skills and Speed Up your Lightroom Workflow”.
Further Resources
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