7 more mistakes that photographers often make

In this second podcast, I run through 7 more mistakes it's easy to make:

 1. Shooting in Auto Mode

Shooting in Auto severely limits your creative options.

2. Not checking settings

It’s easy to forget to check settings in the heat of the moment. Stay on top of your settings, especially when conditions are changing quickly.

3. Housekeeping

Keep your camera equipment cleaned and properly stored. Mould in lenses will not help your photography.

4. Rushing the shot

Take the time to get your focus and exposure correct and be ready. Often things can happen very quickly, so it’s important to have everything properly set up.

5. Lack of Storytelling

A good photograph has a clear subject, and the background should provide some kind of context. Be a Visual Storyteller.

6. Shooting in Low Resolution

Always shoot in RAW and the maximum file size your camera can support. Social media doesn’t need it, but you’ll be grateful when you get that once-in-a-lifetime shot.

7. Ignoring post-processing

Ethical post-processing is a fundamental part of digital photography.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello again and welcome to the second podcast in this short series of two. And what I'm doing is running through, in fact, a total of 13 common mistakes that people make. And I thought it was worthwhile doing this because it's very easy to do these and to drop into bad habits. So what I find very useful is to every now and again just run back over the basics, make sure I'm not doing anything silly, and hopefully you'll find these tips useful. So before I go into them, my name's Graeme Elliott from Graeme Elliott Photography. I'm here to help you get the most from your photography. If you enjoy the podcast, please give me a like or a subscribe, or ideally both, and please take a look on the uh the website as well to see what's happening. So the first issue I'm going to talk about today is shooting in auto. Now I run mini workshops, I've got podcasts, I've got all sorts of things, in fact, full online courses to help you to get out of auto. And the reason is quite simple because auto is allowing the camera to decide what settings will give you the best exposure. But the thing you always have to remember about auto is that the camera doesn't know what you're trying to achieve. So it's just running with a pretty basic set of programs which make sure that the overall image is correctly exposed as far as the camera can work out for you. So the camera doesn't know what the subject is, it will use what you're pointing at generally, but it but until you start getting into your exposure settings and understanding how your autofocus works, you're going to be quite limited. And then going beyond that, we have a thing called modes, and this is where you set certain things as a priority. So typically you'll be using shutter speed or aperture to be the most important thing for that particular image or the photography you're doing. And when you're in one of these modes, so aperture priority is one mode, shutter speed priority is another one. What the camera is doing is you're using the electronics in the camera, which are actually pretty good. Modern cameras are very powerful light capturing boxes, let's put it that way. But you're getting the camera to do the heavy lifting for you where it can safely do that automatically without changing the creative aspects of the photograph, which is where you come in, because we are uh photographers. What we're doing is we're sharing an experience with the people who look at our images. So auto is very, very restricting. Yes, you will get pretty much perfect exposure every time, more or less, but that's not really what photography is about, at least the photography I do. So here we're looking more at snapshots. Um, so when I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, that was the kind of stuff that um we would typically have with um, well, my father particularly had a camera and we do snapshots. So they're just pictures, but no real creative thought behind them. Whereas the photography that I'm looking at now and the photography I teach is about really engaging with the creative aspects of photography, and in doing that, that is really good for your own well-being, your own mental health, and just having some fun. So my recommendation is if that you are in auto and you're really not sure how to get out of it, um, do have a look at what's available on my website or find a course somewhere. You may not like the way I teach, which is fine, but find somewhere to give you a structured course out so that you understand what is going on with the exposure triangle, because that's really important to understand that, and then you're gonna have a lot more fun with your images. Okay, so that was shooting in auto. Secondly, um, is not checking settings. So this is also very important because it may be that you would, you know, Hemily, you're doing consecutive days photography and you forget to change the settings from the previous day, or you're not taking a test exposure to see what you get in terms of um or a test shot just to see what sort of exposure you're getting, what kind of shutter speed you're running out, all of those things. Um to a lesser degree uh white balance, unless you've changed the environment you're in, um, so going from sunlight into say tungsten-lit environments, that kind of thing, you're likely to have a colour cast appear because uh sunlight, the light temperature, without getting too technical, is different to the temperature of tungsten light. So these are essentially it's about wavelengths. Um, but it will, if if you get a funny sort of hue, a funny cast on your images, there's a chance that your white balance is out. And of course, the thing is as well, it's not just about remembering what you did last time, but we can accidentally change a setting without realizing it. If we are in one of the active menus and we don't realize it, we can set up an exposure compensation we don't want. We can be running with a completely wrong ISO, whatever it might be. So at the beginning of every shoot, uh, whatever that means to you, but when you start taking photographs, just do a test shot, look at the settings, make sure that you've got things where they need to be. That might be uh burst modes, you might want to be in a silent mode, uh you might be in want to be in aperture priority or shutter speed priority or whatever it might be. But do remember to take a look. And the other time when it's really critical to keep on top of your settings is when you are in situations where the light levels are changing fairly rapidly. So that would be golden hour, blue hour, and where you've got um if you're outside and you've got conditions that are quite sunny, but you've got clouds coming over every now and again, or maybe pretty regularly, in which case you need to keep doing test shots just to make sure that the exposures are correct. Because if you get the exposure wrong, as I've said many times before, uh if your exposure is wrong, it's very difficult and it can be really difficult to bring that image back when you get into post-processing. So do remember to check your settings regularly and make sure that they are appropriate for the conditions and the kind of photography that you are doing. Okay, another thing is just overlooking details, and this is more the um uh the just the day, the basic stuff, like are your lenses clean? What about your sensors? Um, sensors will gradually get dirty over a over a period, no matter how careful you are with them. So I always recommend getting your camera serviced every now and again if you're using it a lot, probably pretty regularly, maybe once a year. Um, if you're not using it that often, at least have a think about having the um center cleaned. And on that, I definitely, unless you know what you're doing, do not do it yourself. Um, I it's it's well worth it, particularly if you've invested in um you know a reasonable amount of money in camera gear, just get a professional lab to clean the sensor for you and make sure everything else is okay. So, with what I do, often I'm in very dusty environments and it's pretty impressive where dust can get. So I always get the camera cleaned when I come back home and um get the center cleaned and um just make sure there's no dust where it needn't be. Another thing is with lenses, if you've got older lenses, these multi-element um multi-glass element lenses, you can start to get things happening in there. If there's a little bit of damp has got in, you can get things starting to grow in there. It doesn't look very much, but it will just degrade the performance of the lens. So do remember to get your kit serviced periodically, and how often you need to do that will really depend on how often you're shooting, where you're going, and also where you're storing it. So make sure that the gear is stored somewhere where it's clean and dry, um, and um that way you should be okay. But these are the kind of things that um are important for one aspect of overlooking details, and the other thing is just to think about framing opportunities. How do you set up a shot? So when I talk about composition, one of the things I suggest people do is once you're taking a shot, take it, take the same thing with a different composition, that might mean changing position, it might mean zooming in, zooming out, moving where the subject is, going from landscape to portrait. There are various things you can do, but if you are in a situation, and particularly if it's one of those trips of a lifetime opportunities, you you don't want to miss a brilliant picture because you just didn't think of it. So if you are going away, if you're planning to go on a safari or something else that is one of those trips of a lifetime, I really recommend that you spend a lot of time practicing with your camera, get inspired by different compositions, whether it's by doing a course or looking at Instagram or somewhere else where pictures are shared, maybe look at wildlife photographers' websites, have a look at their images, um, wildlife competitions, like um the uh like Wildlife Photographer of the Year, things like that. Look at what people are doing, look at how they're making more interesting images, and then just have keep three or four ideas. It doesn't have to be a whole catalogue of different compositions, but have a few ideas before you go and practice them before you go so that they become more of a habit. You don't want to be struggling to remember a composition when something is happening in happening in front of you. That's not the time to do that. Okay, the next one is uh rushing a shot. So it it is important, and and again, with wildlife, things can happen pretty quick, excuse me, pretty quickly, and if you don't capture them, that might be it. And I've certainly experienced that, right? I've missed a really good shot for whatever reason. I was distracted or something else was going on. I mean, it happens to all of us. So the lesson in that is to always be paying attention, always be ready to go. Um don't be in too much of a hurry. Um, make sure that you are properly focused, that you're framed. Um try do be ready with experimenting with multiple shots for composition, but remember the key thing is to capture the image. So when it comes to post-processing, one of the things I'll do, and I spoke about this last time, is maybe recompose an image. So I might pull out a bit on a zoom lens so I've got so that the subject is not as dominant in the image. How far out you go is up to you, but that does give me the opportunity to just recrop because I use large, I use um raw files, I use the biggest file that the camera is capable of storing, which means that when it comes to editing, I've got a lot of information I can work with, so it gives me quite a lot of freedom when it comes to just recomposing that image. So do remember to check your focus, your exposure, all of those things, and just shoot in a way that gives you some options, so don't always go for the tight crop when you're trying to get an image. Okay, lack of storytelling is another one. So, what do I mean by that? Well, I often talk about um photographers being visual storytellers, and I use that idea because I hope it makes you think about looking at what's in the viewfinder, so what's in the whole frame, not just your subject or one other thing. And I joke about it being, you know, about it avoid allowing you to avoid the situation where you take a portrait of somebody and there's a tree growing out of their head and all the classical stuff. But I think it I think it's important because it does make you look and think about what you're doing. It's thinking about okay, you've so you've first of all you need a clear subject, and this is one of the things that tends not to happen. So people will just fire away. And I I'd been asked to critique stuff, and I I look at it and I think, well, okay, what am I looking at? What am I supposed to be looking at here? This this is nice, but what is it? It's kind of nothing. So have a think, first of all, make sure you've got a clear subject, and then put them in context. If you're not sure what to do, that and that is a good enough story, frankly. In a lot of a lot of situations, that's all you need, just a subject in some sort of a context. People looking at it will tend to fill in the blanks themselves anyway. But thinking about things from a storytelling perspective does lead to images that have far more impact. And if there is something really important going on that you can build on, really think about how you're composing your image. It might be very emotional, it might be disturbing, all sorts of things, you know, everything's possible. We shoot pretty much everything that's going on. So the more you practice with that idea, the better you get at composition, at not having elements in the image that are distracting and don't support the subject, because that's what you're doing. You're you have a subject, and the rest, excuse me, the rest of the image supports the subject normally, or makes the subject really stand out, and and the you know, the impact is in the connection with the subject. But that's what I mean. So it's not to overcomplicate it, and it's not to intimidate people into getting um too caught up in this idea, but the the basic idea is to have a clear subject and just think about look at the what's happening in the background or maybe in the foreground. What is that telling the viewer about the subject and maybe recrop accordingly? Okay, um now another one I definitely don't recommend is shooting in low resolution. So you could argue reasonably that if you're only using your images for social media, then you don't need full resolution shots. So, in other words, um on your camera, you are most likely to be able to change the file size that is stored. So, in other words, how big the captured um the how big the file for the photograph is. So I always go for the maximum size, but you could argue that well, if you go for the smaller size, then you can get a lot more on the storage in the in the um the camera you're using. Uh perhaps certain things will work faster, like bursts, you'll have longer continuous bursts. Um you know, if you're only using the social media where you don't need a big file, in fact, if you have a you you actually don't want big files because if you put a large file, um so I'm I'm guessing now it's a little while since I looked at the specs, but let's say let's say 30 meg file, you stick that into Instagram, that is way too big for Instagram, that's going to compress it like crazy, and you well, you might be really excited by what comes out and what actually comes up on your Instagram feed because it um it's likely that it won't be what you put in. So, yeah, if you're shooting for social media, you want quite small file sizes and JPEGs. However, uh the reason for not shooting that way, because remember, once you've captured the image, you can do what you like with it. You can make it smaller, you could you could actually make it bigger if you want to, although that's that's limited, but you can certainly make it smaller quite easily. You can recrop it, uh you can change it to JPEG. So always shoot in RAW, not JPEG, because uh, if you don't understand what these are, RAW is uh the term that's used to refer to the file format that the camera manufacturer is using on that camera. So the file that comes out of my Canon cameras is a.cr2 file, and what that means is it has all of the information that makes that gives you the image, and it has a lot of information about the image, plus all my metadata, the camera, the shutter speed, all that kind of stuff. Um, it might also include GPS information if that's um um active on your camera. So you do need to be aware of that actually, if you're in certain kinds just shooting certain things like government installations that can uh get you into a lot of trouble. And also, I would turn that off because if one of the things that will affect me pretty regularly is where I'm photographing endangered animals, if you don't strip that metadata out before you post it, there are ways for poachers and people who organize poachers to actually get the GPS information off that image so they know exactly where you were, and they can get the timestamp so they know where you were and when you were at that point, and they know that there's a rhino or whatever there. So be aware of all of that. Um, so coming back to this, this comes back to shoot settings. So I've I've gone on a little bit of a tangent there, but the key thing is you want to shoot as big an image as you can, even if you're shooting for social media, because it does give you the option to print something up that you can put in an album or on a wall or things like that. And the reason I say that is that you might just get that shot, it might be, I don't know, 50% luck, 50% practice, whatever it might be, but you just get that shot that is absolutely you know that kind of once-in-a-lifetime shot, and you don't want that to be a low-res JPEG, you know, because honestly, you might just as well not bother if you're trying to do much with that. Um, you really can't do much with that file in terms of expanding it. You can run it through AI programs, but they're not the same. So it is far, far better to have hundreds of big files, raw files, uh that are not especially interesting, but you've got that one file that is, um, rather than just having lots and lots of very small JPEGs, and then you get that one that does stand out, or that you just capture that moment, and you can't do anything with it. So always shoot in raw and the highest resolution that your camera will give you. And then the final thing, and um we've sort of touched on this anyway, but it's ignoring post-processing. So I do I do have people um who basically say they want to take photographs and not post-process. Well, look, you can do that, but but the reality is um certainly when you're shooting digital photographs, the best photographs when you look at them on your camera, are going to look a bit flat. And the reason for that is that you've probably got a reasonable exposure. You haven't got masses of contrast, and contrast is where images can kind of pop when you get the contrast right. But the good ones look pretty ordinary, and and then when you pop them into prose processing, what you find is you're sort of in the mid-range of pretty much everything in terms of um light, in terms of colour, in terms of contrast, and that means you can make relatively small adjustments, just tweak that image, and suddenly it will pop for you, and suddenly you've got an image that's really compelling. So if you are somebody who is not a believer in post-processing, and I'm gonna talk another aspect of that actually in a moment, but if if you don't want to post-process, I really recommend that you uh you just reconsider that. You don't need to do a lot, I never do much post-processing on my images, but I know what I need to do just to uh bring them out, make them stand out. Um, and often the image I'm starting with looks pretty ordinary, looks pretty flat. So again, that when I teach photography, if I'm if you if you do my course, you'll hear me, or either the courses actually, the smartphone and the um uh DSL mirrorless one. You'll hear me talk about the four stages of photography, so the four parts of the process. So the first one, just to share this with you, is to imagine the image. This is where I talk about, you know, jump online, look at Instagram, look at other people's work. It gives you ideas so that when you're in a particular situation, you've already got some ideas in your head. You're not, I mean, by all means, go with it, and and if you get inspired, go with it. But it's really good to have some some ideas. And if you've ever done paid work, say portraits or a wedding, you really don't want to rock up uh ready to take photographs with no idea what you're gonna shoot. You know, that's that's a really good way to uh blow that as a career. So always have some ideas. So stage one is imagining the image, stage two is the capture, so that's obviously making largely what I've been talking about here, with making sure your settings are correct and all this kind of thing. Stage three is post-processing. Now, this is generally tweaking, this is but it might involve recropping, it can involve other things. So, again, depending on the situation that you're in, and particularly with wildlife, because things happen quickly and they won't, it's unlikely they'll repeat. You do need to be ready to capture, and in terms of say, um, zooming in, it's sometimes better to zoom out a bit and then zoom in by just recropping in the post stage. So, stage three is post processing. And then stage four is just the point where somebody else looks at your image because at that point, once you make it public, you've lost control of it. Now it's public domain. Uh, people will see it through the lens of their life experience, and you obviously you're looking at that finished image through the lens of your life experience and your expectations and your hopes. Somebody else has got a different lens on. They're using um different different glasses to to look at that uh particular image. So it might mean something completely different to them, and that's that's part of the joy of it, and that is where it becomes art because now you've lost it's not in your control anymore, it's it's there, and other people will just interpret it as they as they choose. So the other thing I wanted to say about post-processing, which is another thing that I've had um come up from time to time, is just the ethics of it, and particularly with AI, it's all coming up again because originally this was um you know, when you know joke was people would Photoshop stuff, so it wasn't the actual shot. Um, the first thing is with post-processing, um, is it ethical to post-process? And that comes back down to what is your intention. If your intention is to take the raw image that you've shot and just tweak it so that it looks as close as you can get it to your memory of what you saw, and that's what we're we're working with here, then there is nothing wrong with that. If your intent is just to give as true a representation of that scene as you can, that's fine. If your intent is to deceive or to lie or anything like that, then then that to me is unethical. It's very, very simple. What's your intent? When it comes to AI generated, I don't. Um, I know some photographers do. I think if you do that, then the key thing is to have really on the image somewhere flag that this is an AI-generated image, because then you're being very open about it, and there's no room for misinterpretation there because you've been very open about it. Again, if your intent is to deceive, to lie, um then you know you you hit that uh you hit the ethics um issue once again. Okay, so that is it for um today. I hope that's given you some um some thoughts and reminders. So just to recap, I started with shooting in auto mode. So you know, do get yourself out of auto. If you want to start creating, um it's it's not only about creating interesting images, but just getting certainly value for money out of your camera gear. If you've spent a reasonable amount of money on it, you do want to be making full use of it, or at least enough use to start creating images that really inspire you. And I think that's the most important thing. Because if you get inspired by what you're shooting, or you see, or you you know, you achieve something, you you create a shot that you've wanted to do for years, that's a brilliant feeling, and that's what you want because that's the inspiration that keeps you going back, looking for more, looking for new ideas, trying things out, all of that stuff. And to me, that's a fundamental part of photography. Photography isn't just about getting an image, it's about all the processes associated with arriving at that final image. And certainly my experience is that my style has evolved over time. Uh, some of that is down to the equipment I'm using, some of it is down to different ideas, different experiences, and uh a lot of it is just seeing other people's work and also bouncing off my own work, just looking at something I've done and suddenly thinking, wow, if I did this, that would be even better. So, this is the joy of it. So get out of auto mode. Secondly, we looked at not checking settings. So, this can really really mess you up if you don't remember to do it. You can be firing away again, it might be that trip of a lifetime. You think you've come away with a fantastic sequence of images, and when you look at them, they're all underexposed, or there's they're out of focus, whatever it is. But do make sure that you um you just keep on top of your settings, um, just keep things clean and serviced and and all the rest of it. Give yourself the best chance you can, um, and don't rush. So take your time, but get yourself set up, be ready to shoot, shoot bursts is another good thing to do. Something might be happening, just fire off short bursts because you might just capture that that what that moment where something happens. Think about storytelling, think about being a visual storyteller. So, in other words, have a clear subject, use the background to provide some sort of context or support for the subject if you're telling the story of the subject, and um look at everything that's in the viewfinder or on the on the screen before you take the shot to make sure that that whole image is balanced, it gives you what you want. Um, in the days of film, uh the the discipline I worked to was getting everything right through the viewfinder before I pressed the shutter button. But once I pressed the shutter button, that image was done, that was it. So, and if you if you want to practice that, it's probably not a bad thing to do, actually, because it gets you really looking and understanding what's going on. So, you need to know your exposure triangle, for example, you need to know how your camera's operating in order to make sure everything's set up, hit the shutter button, and that's it. Um, shooting in low resolution, we spoke about that, and um the bottom line is you lose quality and you don't want a low quality image of something that's just amazing. You've got suddenly everything, all everything aligned, uh you appoint the right way, um, you have the right uh shutter speed, you have the right exposure setting, you just press the button at the right moment, and you've got this amazing shot, and it's really low res, so you can't do anything much with it. So you just really don't want to do that. And then the final thing was talking about post-processing. So, as I've said, if you um are reluctant to post-process, I I would honestly um recommend that you rethink that. Um, you don't some people put off by the software, and it can be I mean, I use Photoshop. Photoshop is amazing as a bit of software, and the the capabilities of it, I use a fraction of what it's capable of because that's good enough for what I want to do. Um, so learn what you need and don't worry about the rest of it. It's a little bit like all the camera, all the menus in uh a lot of these cameras now. Um, I rarely dive into the menus, I tend to use the um the settings um information, which is the stuff that comes up on like on my cameras when I hear info. Uh, that's most of the time is all I need to change and all I need to work with. So um, although there is a huge amount of uh things we can change both on the cameras and in the software, the reality is for most of us, we we don't need to go in and change stuff very often, at least the things that involved going into a sort of deep dive through menus. Okay, that's it for um this podcast. So uh I will speak to you again on Friday with a new one. I haven't decided what I'm going to talk about yet, so come back and find out. Um please like and subscribe uh if you feel I've earned it, if you found this useful, and I will speak to you next time. Bye for now.