Photography “mistakes” videos seem to be quite popular these days, but that’s for good reason. Many of us keep making them, and for most of us, we really should learn not to.
In this video, landscape photographer Nigel Danson talks through his top seven landscape photography mistakes that he sees people making all the time. He also discusses how easily these mistakes can be fixed so that you don’t keep making them.
The seven mistakes mentioned in this video aren’t technical screw-ups that can easily be resolved by just learning how to use your camera. These are compositional mistakes that relate to the image, regardless of whether you’re using your phone or a Phase One. Here they all are with timestamps.
- 1:53 – Unbalanced Images
- 4:09 – Weak Foreground
- 6:28 – Foreground drop-off
- 7:48 – No Compelling Element
- 10:15 – Wrong Light
- 13:02 – Too Complicated
- 15:37 – Untidy Edges
I don’t know about you, but I’m guilty of pretty much all of these quite regularly when I go off exploring the wilderness, although nobody ever knows it because I just don’t post those images. I really do try to not make those mistakes, but I’m not a landscape photographer (by any stretch of the imagination) and I often get too caught up in the moment to really pay attention. But when I’m in that kind of environment, I’m not shooting to win awards, I’m shooting to record memories of being there.
Strangely, when I’m photographing a person in the landscape, I rarely seem to make the mistakes mentioned. Maybe I’m just paying more attention. Maybe it’s just because the landscape becomes a supporting role of sorts to the main subject (the person). Perhaps I just need to go exploring with more people and forget the landscapes.
Are you guilty of making these mistakes? What others do you make all the time?
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