How To Avoid 5 Common Photography Mistakes

we all make mistakes.  we are human.  some of my favorite photographs that i have taken contain a photography mistake or two, but i love them anyways because of the moment i captured.  while photography mistakes are okay, they can often be unpleasing to the viewers eyes so we want to avoid making them when we can.  more often than not, photographers are making these photography mistakes simply because they don’t know they are doing it.  by knowing about these photography mistakes beforehand you will be able to keep them in mind the next time you pick up your camera.

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How To Avoid 5 Common Photography Mistakes

mistake 1. limb chops

this is a mistake all photographers make when they first start out in photography, but it’s an easy mistake to fix from this point forward.  think of it like this…”if it bends, don’t chop it!”  when photographing people {or animals}, be sure to get their entire body within the frame.  now, what about the times when you want to get a close up shot?  cropping in camera is just fine, but make sure you don’t crop at the joints.  for example, your photo should not cut off a person at the ankle, neck, knee, waste, wrist, shoulder, or elbow.  remember that those joints bend so you don’t want to place your crop there.  instead, move up or down and place your crop on an area that is not a joint.

mistake 2. white balance

seeing white balance correctly is something that develops over time and experience with photography.  it took me about three to six months to properly train my eye to see white balance correctly.  when you are looking at white balance, there are a few things you want to keep in mind.  you want the whites in your photographs to be white and you want the skin tones of your subjects to look accurate.  when looking at skin tones, you want to make sure your subjects aren’t too cool {have a blue tint} or too warm {have a yellow tint}.  a happy medium is what we are trying to achieve.  the best way to achieve proper white balance is through monitoring your kelvin settings on your camera or using a grey card.

mistake 3. tilted horizons

when you have a natural horizon or any natural lines present in your photo, you want to make sure they are straight with the edge of the frame.  if you have a photograph of people that are in front of a tiled horizon, it will give the viewer the impression that the subjects are going to slide out of the frame.  so look for those natural lines when you are photographing and be sure to get them as straight as possible.  do your photos still seem to be a little tilted straight out of camera?  don’t stress about it!  it’s really easy to straight a horizon using the crop overlay tool in the develop module of lightroom.

to learn more about how to use lightroom, be sure to read my post about how i learned to edit in lightroom and photoshop.

mistake 4. one out of focus eye

this is a tricky one, but with some practice, it’s an easy fix!  whenever you are taking a portrait, it is very important that if both eyes are going to be present within the frame, they both need to be in focus.  because our subjects are sometimes tilted and not square with the frame, this can be a little tricky because their eyes are on different focal planes.  but by raising your aperture to a higher number, you can help to achieve focus on both eyes.  for portraits, i like to keep my aperture anywhere between f/2.8 and f/3.2 to get both eyes in focus.

mistake 5.  blurry images

it happens!  especially when photographing little ones, they are just so fast!  but freezing movement is so easy, you just need to be prepared for it.  while there will be images that you want to show movement and motion, there will also be the images that you want to achieve crisp focus despite the movement.  for example, in the image below i wanted to freeze the motion of the little one being lifted into the air so that i could capture his sweet reaction.  one of the reasons why your image is blurry is because your shutter speed is too slow.  my friend courtney taught me that it is best to make sure your shutter speed is at least at 1/125 when you are photographing a moving subject.  if at first you don’t succeed, check that shutter speed and try, try, again.

we are going to make mistakes sometimes, it is only natural.  you are going to have a gorgeous photograph of your child where you captured the best smile, but one eye will be out of focus or maybe you didn’t capture their movement and there is blur.  don’t throw out the photo, it’s okay to make mistakes.  but by knowing the common photography mistakes that photographer makes, you will be more aware of what you should focus on the next time you pick up your camera.

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