Beginner Photography Tips & what to Avoid

The Most Common Mistakes & Important Photography Tips For Beginners

Beginner Photography tips for new photographers. Learn what to do and what not to do with these tips.

In this tutorial Reggie Ballesteros talks through the best tips for new photographers and mistakes you can avoid!

Beginner Photography Tips and Mistakes you Can Avoid!

Beginner Photography Mistake #1 Not Reading Your Gear Manuals

Read the manual! This one may seem basic, but you will miss out on your device’s full potential if you don’t take the time to read the manual. Your camera and lenses will have manuals, as well as drones and editing software.

Even if you are just upgrading to a newer version, there may be a new or changed feature you will miss out on if you don’t read the information.

Take the time to fully understand the piece of technology you are using, and learn helpful insights from the manual.

This will also help you if something is misbehaving on a shoot to know what to do differently.

If you know how your gear works, and how to access certain settings quickly, you will save yourself a lot of time. 

Beginner Photography Mistake #2 Always Shooting Wide Open

‘Shooting Wide Open’ is a term that means setting your lens to its maximum aperture, or the opening in a camera that lets light pass through being set to its widest and most open.

This lets the maximum amount of light possible in your camera and will give you a shallow depth of field.

This gives sharp clarity to your subject but causes everything else to be soft and out of focus.

It’s a cool effect and great for portrait shots, but this can become a crutch and limit your possibilities as a photographer.

If you can learn to compose a busy scene with everything being clear, in focus and in place it will really show your skill as a photographer and make some wonderfully complex photos.

Beginner Photography Mistake #3 Relying on Fixing Everything In Editing

Editing should only be for touching up an already good photograph. It is not how you make a good photograph, and having a mentality around fixing it in editing software can lead to sloppy photography habits and bad photos. 

Editing should not be the factor that makes the photograph good!

Getting everything right in your actual photograph will enable you to make nice enhancements and a better product post production.

Make sure you learn how to take good photos straight out of the camera, and only use editing for minor touch ups. There are plenty of resources you can use to learn to take great photos. 

Learn how to adjust your camera settings, choose the right lenses, and capture the best compositions.

Improve your photography with this comprehensive guide if you want to learn how to not rely on editing to make your photos great!

Beginner Photography Mistake #4 Watching Youtube more than Practicing taking Photos!

Watching Youtube for inspiration and ideas is great, but this is not a substitute for actual practice!

Watching videos alone will not make you a better photographer. You can gain great insight and helpful tips, but if you don’t go out and use these your photography skills won’t grow much. 

Getting out there and taking photos is the ONLY way you are going to improve. Actually applying what you are learning and thus gaining experience is what you need to do. 

Take your camera with you everywhere you go, especially when you are just beginning as a photographer. Take photos of everything that catches your eye.

This will teach you to have a keen eye for good compositions, understand different lighting, and give you many examples to look back on when critiquing your work.

4 more beginner photography mistakes to avoid…

These next four mistakes will help you to learn what to avoid. You can get better as a photographer by avoiding these and following the tips for what you should do!

Beginner Photography Mistake #5 Not Learning How/When To Use Flash

If you never want to use flash or consider yourself a ‘natural light only’ photographer, it’s still important to know how to use it.

Preferring natural light is not an excuse to not learn how to use flash well! 

Even if it is not your favorite way to shoot you will find yourself in shoots where you absolutely need additional lighting via flash. 

Don’t avoid learning how to use on and off camera flash. Your skills will be more well rounded if you can take photos with or without flash and know when to use it or not.

Beginner Photography Mistake #6 Too much Flash!

On the flip side, you could be using way too much flash in your photography. 

Too much light from every angle can actually take authenticity away from your photos. And they will just look washed out and too bright!

Avoid getting into the habit of investing too much time into setting up all the flash gear when you don’t actually need it. 

Balance between light and shadow, exposure and contrast is what is needed.

Beginner Photography Mistake #7 Buying Gear To Fix Your Bad Photos

Buying gear to fix your bad photos, does not fix your bad photos. Growing as a photographer does. More often then not your bad photos can be fixed or made better without buying new stuff. 

Gear doesn’t make you better, as you bet better you can do more with better gear.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with buying new gear, just understand that isn’t how you get better. Your gear is only as good as the photographer behind it.

It matters more that you learn how to use you camera, how to find good light, and how to set up a good composition. The only way your photos will get better is if you practice and it doesn’t matter very much what gear you use to do so.

Beginner Photography Mistake #8 Not Calibrating Your Monitor

Using calibrator hardware on your PC or laptop screen is not commonly thought of but will have a huge impact on your photo editing!

This will help you set accurate colour and exposure valutes for your photos. Just because it looks right on your screen doesn’t mean everyone else will see your finished product that way.

Without realizing it the screen you use can be biasing how you edit.

For example, if your screen naturally has a higher amount of green in it, your edited photos might have a heightened amount of magenta in the colour tones.

Or you edited photos might end up looking a little dark if you are editing with your screen brightness on max.

Print off your work and look for contrast and brightness to double check. Also look into a screen calibrator if you don’t know what they are 

Avoid these common Beginner photography mistakes and level up your skills!

Want more information on photography skills? Read this comprehensive photography guide!

Which of these beginner photography tips will you use to improve THIS WEEK?

Comment Below!