PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS you need to AVOID!

I find that for some reason now every time I want to record a video just before I press record my mouth just goes really dry it's like my brain goes no you're not recording for 20 minutes no chance it's really annoying anyway welcome back to my office everybody I haven't been here for about six weeks I've been traveling and stuff which has been lots of fun but I'm very pleased to be back and that said this video I did intend to film while eyes away a few days ago in Greenland but it didn't go to plan as many of you will I imagine have expected so one of the reasons I was in Greenland was to do workshops and the kids who are from there which is really really fun and I don't do too many workshops but I think I'm gonna start kind of considering how I could do more because I I do quite enjoy them but anyway what I love what I do do workshops do do workshops well I've learned when I do do workshops is that I get all these kind of tips and pieces of advice that I've been given over the years they all kind of just flood straight back to me and some of them are really good and really useful and I try and pass those pieces of advice on obviously and others are completely useless and just really bad advice and I try not to pass those on but I thought I'd do a video about those bad piece of advice in the hope that they can well maybe make you think or maybe make you avoid them where you might disagree with them which would be interesting in itself so yeah I thought I'd just do a quick video about about the worst pain you endure can't talk also this video is sponsored by lumix and i noticed that's still when i go to places like Greenland or places anywhere really with quite harsh conditions but I get other photographers coming up to me and saying wow man you bring the mirrorless camera here and it's as though there is still like a subsection of the photography community who think that mirrorless cameras are the same as they were like 10 and 15 years ago which is just not the case I mean 10 or 15 years ago you wouldn't have taken a mirrorless camera to Greenland because if you'd had dropped it in the ice or left it in a blizzard it probably wouldn't have to all that well whereas now I mean this g9 is built like a tank it's absolutely brilliant I've taken this all over the world and have never had any problems with it so yeah mirrorless cameras have come on leaps and bounds in in durability if you if you weren't aware of that so yeah interesting point I think now bad tip number one probably the worst tip I've ever been given by actually quite a respected photographer I'm not gonna mention his name because he was a really bad piece of advice and outside of that I think he's really good but I was once told to always shoot wide open and perhaps you've given me that advice because at that stage I was kind of just a beginner and when you're a beginner one of the most aesthetically pleasing things is to see sort of out-of-focus elements of an image and you can kind of achieve a professional look by shooting wide open even if you suck at photography because we always associated shallow depth-of-field with good cameras then generally good photographers because of that trouble is now that with portrait mode on phones maybe that's kind of died down a bit but also lens is very rarely perform optically optically optically can't talk optically at their best when they're wide open so a lot of the best ones will be still really really sharp in the center although maybe not quite as sharp as they would be stopped down by a stop or two if you have a subject that's not right in the middle of the frame you might find that your image is a little bit soft you might also notice vignette in which in some cases is desirable but not always and the other problem you might find is that if you miss focus even just slightly your image will be ruined so if you're taking a portrait you want to focus on the eyes but accidentally focus on the nose well then the image is just useless whereas if you stop down a couple of stops it probably wouldn't be the end of will because you might got the eyes in focus too so yeah there's a time and a place to open a lens right up if you're in really low light and you've reached like that the maximum ISO that you're willing to put your camera to then yeah y'all need shoot wide open but certainly for depth of field stopping down by just a little bit can really really help improve the optical performance of most lenses and that's something I've really recommend certainly at the start when you run when you're just learning terrible tip number two is to pick a style now it's commonly known that in photography all the most successful photographers really have a kind of a subject or a kind of subject of genre that they shoot but what I despise about this piece of advice is the word pick like you can just kind of pluck something out the air you know and do it I'll shoot straight photography or I'll shoot landscape photography and I've noticed that in some instances you get really quite experienced photographers who will refuse to kind of go and experiment with another kind of photography because all know I'm known for this kind of photography it's not easy to find a genre that you want to shoot and then you want to dedicate loads and loads of your time to and it shouldn't be a decision that's rushed or just picked it should be a decision that you come to over the course of years of experimentation and to suggest that it can just be sort of picked I think ISM is detrimental to the experience of learning your your craft I would suggest and I mean me for example it took me a long long time to work out that I wanted to take photos in places where I wanted to spend my time that's basically what I would define my my style or my genres is not really a style or genre but I do not care and the point is that I've experimented a lot I've visited lots of places that I didn't particularly want to be just for photos and I didn't enjoy it so I've got to a point where now I know what I want to shoot and why I want to shoot it that wouldn't have happened without lots of experimentation and I certainly could have just gone down a list of genres and just picked one which I think was what was implied when I was told that bit of advice [Music] useless tip number three is to always use a tripod now I've picked up some heat for my opinions on tripods before I hate tripods if you don't know if you knew through this channel you might not know that I I do everything I can to avoid using tripods and I don't think there's anything wrong with that just as I don't think there's anything wrong with using tripods the point is that it's a personal preference if you find that you enjoy shooting more with a tripod if you find that you're more productive if you find that you get better images with a tripod great keep using a tripod but you don't have to it's personal choice it's not absolutely factual that you'll get better photos when you use one apart from when you're shooting in the dark or with crazy filters fact is is that if you've got a modern camera that has some form of stabilization you have good technique in your shooting above solve one or two hundredths of a second with your shutter speed on kind of relatively normal focal lengths you will get good shots you will get sharp shots shots that wouldn't be any sharper if you used a tripod so yeah there's really no need if if you're working in in that set of parameters that said if you like using a tripod go for it it's just that you don't have to I don't think and some people go to great lengths to tell you that you you do which i think is silly rubbish tip number four is that you need to use filters now I rarely use filters to be honest I find it much easier to darken a sky for example in Lightroom with just one click of a button I find that much simpler than messing around in the field with loads of filters like graduated fills and stuff when it could be raining the weather could be bad I'm just I'd much prefer to do it and post and not risk missing images out in the field because I'm [ __ ] around with with filters that's it if you're shooting kind of water or something and you want to blow water you will need a filter and likewise if you want to remove glare from a scene then you'll probably need a polarizer too but outside of that you really don't need filters is so easy to make adjustments to images with capable files and modern cameras in post-production you don't need to do it in camera again it may well be a personal preference that you do it in camera in which case that's absolutely fine but you don't have to that's my point and all of these things I've been told basically I kind of have to do to get good photos in the past and it's it's rubbish number five buy the best SD cards no useless rubbish I mean I have good cards I've got some disc Xtreme cards which have got very fast write speeds but do I need them the majority of time no I don't need them I've got these in case I want to film things in 4k which I do every so often and if I didn't do that I could get by with completely bog-standard cards because I very rarely shoot things like sports and I very rarely hit the buffer on my camera so write speeds generally aren't all that important to me so I could get by with them with normal cards and if you're on a budget with you photography which all of us are pretty much then I think your money would be better spent on other things than the best SD cards personally number six I think I always lose my place on these list videos but never mind that number six is that you have to nail your focal length now I see a lot of people what I do do kind of workshop things and they'll agonize over whether they've got the exact right focal length in the exact composition that they're aiming for in camera and I would suggest that you don't do that I'd suggest that you get roughly the composition you're after and then go a little bit wider than that to allow for cropping and changes in aspect ratio in post and then shoot and then go and find another composition go and find something else to take a photo of because more often than not when I've done that in the past when I've tried to make sure that I've got absolutely the exact composition I want more often than not I get home and find that I want to change it and I want to crop or I wish I've gone wider or I wish I'd not taken as much time and I've gone and got another two or three photos down the track so yeah obviously composition is vital and I'm not don't pay attention to that but there's such a thing as paying too much attention to it and worrying that you haven't got the exact right frame when actually chances are more than than not you want to give yourself room to crop in post number seven is golden hour or bust now this is a big one for me because lots of people I've noticed advocate only really shooting at the the best times of day for lights Oh God now blue hour things like that and don't get me wrong I love to shoot a gardener and I love to shoot a blower but they are not the only times a day that you can get really good photos orange light is just one kind of story but the fact is stories happen 24 hours a day and stories are what photography is all about so there's always things to take photos of regardless of whether you have orange skies on that and thinking otherwise I think means that you you missing out on some great opportunities for photos and storytelling number eight or nine I think this one's probably going to be a bit controversial as well you always need to shoot raw it's a quote that I think is is nonsense now if you're shooting a scene that's very high in contrast or a scene that you think is going to need extensive editing then clearly it makes sense to capture all the detail you can and to shoot in RAW however there are times when shooting a JPEG is absolutely fine in fact I think there's a whole generation of photographers who have kind of just shot raw for so long and this is me included that they haven't noticed that JPEG processes in modern cameras have become really really incredible and impressive and a lot of the time it would be absolutely fine to just get the JPEGs so yeah if you've got card space if you've got storage space if you can piece has got the processing power if you can be bothered to go through the hassle the extra added hassle of shooting roars all the time then go for it but if you're shooting particularly like fast-moving action on shots that you don't think you're gonna be editing all that much that I kind of think well give JPEGs a shot and to be honest you might be surprised at how good they come up [Music] number nine I think this one is because it's the last one on my list and I think the list is nine things image quality is all about senses No so clearly a sensor is the major impact on things like ISO and sharpness and dynamic range and all that kind of stuff the thing is that making a good image or a great image that is also about things like timing and preparation and skill and too often I think the term image quality is is used to only describe what a sensor is capable of you know if you look for the term image quality on Google then chances are you'll come up with a loader reviews that have all kinds of charts and stuff showing supposedly what image quality is the fact is that you need to find a sensor that fits into a camera body that economically works for you and fits into your bag and your workflow then you need to do a whole lot of preparation and a whole load of learning in order to match that sensor and those economics to a scene that's going to be a good photo and that is just completely lost on what seems to have become that the concept of image quality and I think it forces people to overlook or or place too much importance on senses and not enough importance of other aspects of a camera and also other aspects of the art of photography basically I think too often people focus too much on on specs and graphs and all the stuff that can make a difference to photos but probably nowhere near as big a difference as as I say things like timing so yeah that was a terrible tip I mean most these are quite obvious to me and some of them are more debatable than others but to me these are probably the the worst pieces of photography advice I've been given in the years that I've been shooting hopefully you found something like useful hopefully you agreed with some of it if you disagreed with some of it as well I'd love to hear what you think and I'll be back soon still here I'm gonna be here for a few weeks which is nice because when you're home you are well you don't run out of pants oh also the book those of you who have ordered the book it's on its way to me or they are on their way to me wait to take delivery of them I've changed the front cover improved I think to a bit more of an interesting image and I'm looking forward saying that so if you've bought one thank you so much at me with you soon there's a few days of pre-order left but after that I won't be signing anymore to be sending them because it has turned out that I'm gonna be spending a lot of time signing books which is fine but if it gets any more then it will mean that I do less videos which is which is too sad so yeah thank you very much for your orders can't wait to send them to you they'll be with you soon thanks for watching [Music]

Channel: James Popsys

Views: 121,425

Rating: 4.8334403 out of 5

Keywords: photography tips, photography advice, how to take better photos, photography tutorial, photography beginners, better photos, bad photography, james popsys, lumix, micro four thirds, photography lesson, improve your photography

Id: 3RNWJPbrZfo

Length: 15min 30sec (930 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 28 2019