8 BEGINNER Landscape Photography MISTAKES That’ll HURT You the MOST!!

many thanks to squarespace for sponsoring this week's video no matter how hard you try no matter how much you prepare for anything you're going to make mistakes and encounter failures but the way you respond to those mistakes is perhaps what's most important and i talk about mistakes rather often on my channel for two key reasons the first reason is that i am not afraid to admit that i'm human and i make mistakes a lot of them i am not the world's best landscape photographer far from it in fact but i am a better photographer this year than i was last year and i am better today than i was yesterday and the second reason is that i believe there is not a better learning opportunity that exists today than that of making mistakes understanding what not to do is just as important as understanding what to do and in this video i want to share with you the eight most egregious mistakes that i made when i first got started that taught me the most over the course of the last seven years with respects to my landscape photography in hopes that i guess some of these mistakes might resonate with you today and you'll be able to resolve them in a much quicker fashion than i did a lot of these mistakes i did over and over and over again for the first two maybe three years and if i would have been able to solve for them in a much quicker fashion i believe that it would have drastically sped up my rate of improvement so i did rate these mistakes in order of severity so mistake number eight is the i guess you could call it least severe of the bunch and mistake number one is the hands down the most egregious one of the bunch so to jump right into it mistake number eight is something that i simply call always landscapes and basically what always landscapes means is i was very confused in the beginning as to the different orientations that you could move your camera i know you had your your landscape orientation and then you could flip your camera vertically into a portrait orientation and just those names the nomenclature landscape portrait orientation completely threw me off i was photographing the outdoors landscapes so i should be shooting in a landscape orientation why would i use a portrait orientation to photograph a mountain that was the mindset that i had in so many of my earlier images right here were in a landscape orientation and it wasn't until i guess maybe two years a year and a half it was a long time that i started to experiment flipping my camera in a vertical orientation and i was able to come away with images like this one right here and many of these images that i'm showing right now these are images from when i when i very first got started so so please don't be too harsh on them they're they're not images that i think are atrocious but there are also images that i'm not super proud of either but when i first started to flip my camera in a vertical or a portrait orientation and start capturing images like this it kind of taught me or made me realize that that opens up a completely additional world of possibilities because with the use of wide-angle lenses when you're in a portrait orientation or vertical orientation that creates a lot more room in your frame for clear foreground mid-ground and background elements it's easier to create visual flow i find in a portrait orientation or a vertical orientation so always shooting in a landscape orientation is something that really kind of held me back in the in the very beginning now the seventh mistake is something that i call disjointed compositions i spent a lot of time kind of researching composition when i first got started i realized that that would be the way to improve my photography the most in the shortest amount of time so i did a lot of time researching it but i didn't pay a whole lot of attention to visual flow or where the viewer's eye was going to travel throughout my photograph and i ended up getting or creating a lot of images that were just kind of going in different directions and here's a good example right here of an image from a a lake not too far from my house but you know you have this boardwalk leading this way this is actually my wife right here and then you have the the boardwalk leading this way or the dock i should say and then you have the sun right here and the composition is just kind of going in different directions and i didn't really realize that the human eye is always going to naturally gravitate towards the brightest area of your scene so what i do now is try and figure out what is that brightest area of my scene and try and cater my composition to ultimately lead to that brighter area but i was never even thinking about that that was not part of my thought track when i first got started and i started creating just images like this right here and you know this one's not too too bad but you know you have the brightest area right here you have the light rays leading to the sun you have this walkway leading to this direction you got the rocks over here leading over here so the the composition was just leading in different directions but just the the biggest issue i felt was the fact of just not paying attention as to what that visual flow would be not putting yourself in the viewer's position as to how they're going to view your photograph and i started to create images like this one right here that i think are have better visual flow this is from uh maybe three years ago but this is the brightest area of the scene and you can see that the reflection leads to that area these rocks lead to that area it just has a lot more visual flow to it's a lot easier to look at here's another great example as well where this is the brightest area of the scene and you have this nicest s-curve that leads right up to this area right there so being aware as to what the visual flow is and where the composition is going to be leading the viewer's eye throughout the image i think is a a great best practice to get into now the sixth mistake is something that i call shooting from the eye and i've mentioned this before it's actually been a while now that the best advice i ever heard related to composition was to get low and close to something in your foreground and i used to shoot everything at eye level everything and now when i go back and look at some of my earlier photos i realized that these were great opportunities to get low and to get close to something and here's a huge an amazing opportunity right here that i completely missed i still like this photograph i love the simplicity of it but i really wish i would have gotten a little bit lower to the ground got a little bit closer to the seaweed because i think it would have made for a much more immersive photo especially with the water kind of coming closer to the camera here's another good example right here this is one that kind of kind of burns me a little bit because i really do like this photograph but i remember shooting this at eye level of course and all i wanted to do is just make sure i didn't cut off the tree trunk but there's so much of these um these nice autumn leaves that had fallen down off this tree and if i would have gotten just a little bit lower i would have been able to capture a lot of that and i would have added so much more interest and so much more story to this overall photograph but i completely missed that because i was shooting at eye level here's another example right here where just i just getting closer to the water flowing to the camera getting a little bit lower creating a much more immersive photograph but just not always having the camera right up to you you know to your standing height and just trying to get a little bit lower and get a little bit more creative with your compositions because when i started to do that that literally opened up a whole different world of compositions for me and i don't really know why it took me so long to realize that but getting low and close to something and here's a good example right here this is from last year's trip along the oregon coast but getting much much lower to the sand getting much lower to the water coming into the camera or retreating out away from the camera here's another example just getting low behind this tree right here overlooking this beautiful vista right through here and just getting close to things in your foreground so just getting low and getting close to anything that's in your foreground is just fantastic best practice to get into and it really really changed the way that i look at my compositions now the fifth mistake is something that i simply call low shutter count and what low shutter count is is basically i spent so much time in the beginning doing a lot of research and this is kind of my personality i i'm a researcher i research everything to death and i try and teach myself so much at home but i spent more time learning at home than i did in the field clicking the shutter button practicing so i think getting having more of a balance maybe 50 50 but just getting out there get that shutter count higher because there's no better practice out there than just being out there and going through the motions because learning online or reading books or reading articles and those kind of things it can only teach you so much but if you're not taking that information and applying it in a real world scenario you're going to have a hard time really i should say improving in that particular genre or that particular area that you are focusing on so just getting that shutter count up get out there get practice get exposures in and just practice what you're learning now the fourth one and this is a big one for me is something that i call an exclusionary art i heard this saying a couple years ago now a few years ago now and it's that photography is an exclusionary art what you exclude is just as important as what you include in your frame and when i heard that that completely changed the way that i looked at composition and it also taught me more about edge patrol making sure you're not cutting things off in your frame being aware of what you're putting towards the size of your photograph because i find that if you have a lot of distracting elements along the edges of your scene the viewer's eye is going to gravitate towards those edges and the i should say that i find that the the likelihood is much greater if the viewer's eye is on the edge of your scene that there's a high likelihood that they're going to abandon your photograph and look at something else versus if you have the viewer's eye immersed into the center portion of your photograph so i try and keep the edges of my images as clean as i possibly can and here's an image from many many years ago where this i obviously was not paying attention to the edges of my frame i had this tree far too close to this edge i got to stick too close to this edge i'm cutting off all these rocks right here i have this area up here in the corner and i just wasn't doing any kind of edge patrol or just being aware of what the distractions are i wasn't paying attention to what i excluded in my frame all i was thinking about is what i included in my frame which in this example was this tree right here and this bridge here's another example right here this is a golf course not too far from my house and i love this little cobweb right here but i don't know why i put it so close to the edge of the frame over here this tree is actually touching the edge i like the overall scene but just what i was doing with the edges of my scene it just didn't work there was just far too many distractions or far too many interesting areas of interest right along the edges of my photograph and nothing in the center to kind of draw the viewer's eye into the image here's another example right here where as you can see you know cutting off these rocks cutting off this plant over here cutting off this plant on the bottom there's just a lot of things that i completely missed in this photograph because i wasn't paying attention to what i excluded in the frame i was just too focused on what i was going to include in the image so what you exclude is just as important as what you include absolutely fantastic advice that i received a few years ago now the third mistake is bad timing i used to go out for um to shoot any kind of landscapes whenever i had time to do it so maybe when i got off work or maybe when i got off work earlier maybe you know after breakfast one day and i found myself shooting in very very harsh lighting conditions and it took me a while to realize like why my images weren't looking like a lot of the other images that i looked at from some of my other favorite photographers and this is perhaps one of the easiest things to solve for is just having better timing not going out at 10 and in the morning on a cloudless day or high noon or three in the afternoon when there's no clouds in the sky but you know if it's an overcast day that might be a good opportunity to go out when you've got nice even lighting or getting up before the sun rises or staying out after the sun sets or as the sun sets those are great opportunities to get that kind of golden light that the golden light that we're all after that creates those kind of three-dimensional photographs with that nice even side light i didn't really understand any of that and i was just simply going out at the wrong times of the day so bad timing very very easy thing to correct but man does it make a world of difference just going out when the conditions are conducive to create a great outdoor photograph now the second mistake is something that i call what are you looking at or what am i looking at and this happened a lot to me because i would see a beautiful scene and a lot of times a beautiful scene doesn't always correlate to a beautiful photograph and i think this is a fantastic example right here this is an image from five years ago well there was this nice cloud inversion you know nice uh this was the sunrise the light was coming through here and it was a beautiful scene to be there on location and maybe if i was a better photographer then i could have captured this in a better way but when i look at this photograph i'm not a hundred percent certain as to what i'm looking at i have the sun all the way over here to this edge i have the the only colorful plant all the way at the edge once again i was only paying attention to to what i included and not what i excluded or where i was positioning areas of interest in my scene but this image right here i'm not 100 certain as to what i'm supposed to be looking at here's another example right here where i put this rock dead center of the frame and i didn't take this photograph because i love this rock i took this photograph because of these sailboats in the background and like the clouds in the sky but i put the horizon so far to the top and i knew i was probably getting a little bit too cute with this image i was trying to use foreground elements to draw the viewer's eye in the photograph but i just didn't do it very effectively and when i look at this image i'm not 100 certain as to what i'm supposed to be looking at here's another one right here once again i started to feel a little bit more confident i thought i was using a great use of a leading line to this just boring little island in the uh the center of the frame in the background but i'm not 100 certain is this an image of these boats is it this this canal is it this island back here there's no interesting light it just felt like kind of an empty image so being aware of kind of what you're photographing and i don't think every image needs to have a main focal point but i do think a lot of just paying attention to the story that you're trying to tell with a photograph is very important and here's an image from my recent trip to the oregon coast last year where it's very clear what this is a photograph of you have these really cool moss covered rocks in the foreground you have the waterfall in the background there's another example right here these super cool cactus in the foreground and this beautiful mountain in the background with this subtle light just kissing it peaks and then you have these dramatic storm clouds in the background but it's a very clear subject and like i said i don't think every image needs to have a clear subject but i think just having that thought track of what's the purpose of this photograph what do i want people to feel or what do i want people to see when they look at this image now the number one hands-down most egregious mistake that i made the first two years when i first got started is having the thought track that gear actually matters i spent this is twofold now i spent so much time the first two years researching cameras researching lenses researching what was available researching what was coming out i was obsessed with finding the best gear and i was obsessed with trying to buy my way into better photographs i spent all this time doing research on camera equipment when i should have spent that time trying to get better ideas on on how to improve my composition or how to to research better ways that i can plan a photo shoot or traveling to a location to take better images i spent all my time researching camera equipment and camera manufacturers in a second portion of this i spent all my money buying camera gear i spent thousands of dollars i went from a 400 camera at one point to maybe six or eight months later to having a four thousand dollar setup and i spent all that time researching camera gear and the images that were coming out of that 4 000 camera were no better than images that were coming out of my 400 setup so i would highly suggest anyone who's getting started with landscape photography to not go out and spend a fortune on on the the latest and greatest lenses and the best cameras out there to get started because it's not going to make a whole lot of a lot of difference for you as far as the overall outcome in your photography goes you'll probably much better serve just spending time researching better photograph or different photographic techniques or compositional techniques and just learning landscape photography and practicing with whichever camera that you happen to have at that time that is going to serve you much better in the long run so having that thought track that gear is really really important was something that really wasted not only a ton of money but also a ton of time when i first got started plus it made my wife really mad as well because i spent a small fortune with a hobby back then that really was was just a hobby so gear matters is some was that was a big mistake that i fell into in the when i first got started as well so i really hope that some of those mistakes resonates with you today and like i mentioned at the beginning of the video i hope that you'll be able to resolve some of those mistakes if you happen to be encountering them much quicker than i did because i think that my lack of resolving them in a quick manner really slowed down my progression in my first two to three years so i do hope that was helpful and before i do wrap up this week's video i do want to say just a real big thanks again to the sponsor of this week's video which is squarespace who i use for all of my website and ecommerce needs squarespace provides a dynamic and attractive online platform to create your website you can display your photography using squarespace's professional portfolio designs and customize the layout and look and feel of your gallery just so you can make it your own with squarespace's traffic overview feature you can track trends and page visits and views to better optimize your content and you can even grow and engage with your customers with squarespace's email campaign tools which will enable you to create engaging emails that match your website with your products your blog post and logo just so your messaging remains consistent so if you're looking to start a new website or possibly upgrade your current website check out squarespace.com forward slash mark denny for a free trial and 10 off your first purchase so i really do hope you enjoyed this week's video i do hope that was helpful and beneficial if you have any questions related to any of it please leave those in the comments section below and i guarantee i will get back in touch with you if you did enjoy the video if you could give it the thumbs up and subscribe to the channel if you're not subscribed already and as always i really do appreciate you watching this week's video and i will see you all next wednesday bye

Channel: Mark Denney

Views: 95,658

Keywords: landscape photography, photography, landscape photography tips, landscape, mark denney, beginner landscape photography, landscape photography for beginners, beginner tips for landscape photography, beginner landscape photography tutorial, photography tips for beginners, landscape photography mistakes, common landscape photography mistakes, improve landscape photography, landscape photography techniques, landscape photography tips for beginners, beginner photography mistakes, mistakes

Id: 4KvxE-qNfNs

Length: 18min 28sec (1108 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 11 2020