The 7 Photography Mistakes I See All Photographers do!

in this week's video I want to help you avoid some of the biggest mistakes I always see when it comes to landscape photography and if you hang around I'll show you how you can get 50 off any product from Sal digital but let's just jump right in so probably the biggest thing I always see when I give some sort of Photography feedback is that people are not aware of the edges of the photos so here is an example of my own so what I'm talking about is that you need to make Edge Patrol you can see how this little black stump crawls in from the side and we also have a little white dot down here those two I would just clean out in post processing in this photo here from Iceland you can see all this debris we have here in the snow and up here and all these small ones here definitely also some that are just worth getting rid of you can see here is an after photo or a little bit later photo that I cleaned up and you can see how big of a difference it makes in this example here from a couple of years back we have this big plant sticking in here in the foreground along the edge and we have this here you can see another photo from the same morning I actually think it's the same birds and you can see this one here it's just much cleaner because the edge is clean the next big thing I also always see is that people are not deliberate about what shutter speed they're using so let's talk a little bit about that so here are two different examples from the same waterfall and you can see here on the left it is a fairly long shutter speed the waterfall is just like one big streak and you hardly have any texture in the waterfall here in front however in this example here it was taken at the same time so I have been experimenting with the shutter speeds but we have much more texture in the waterfall here and also in the background so personally I definitely prefer the right photo right here and it is simply just because the water looks more like water and not just like some melted plastic again here are two examples from Iceland the left photo here very long shutter speed that was how I went about it back when I started out as a landscape photographer this photo here is from 2015 just smacked a 10 stop filter on in just 30 seconds or two minute long exposures just making sure that there were no texture whatsoever in anything water a few years later in the end of 2018 I took this photo here instead where I've become a little bit more deliberate about what shutter speed are used it's also important when you photograph big waterfalls that if you want to give an impression about how big it is that the viewer can actually see the individual water particles as they can in the right hand photo here's another example where I have put two photos together as somewhat long exposure for the foreground where we still have the texture so let it's probably like half a second and then a fast exposure for score of us here in the background where you can really see the individual curtains or breakups in the water now all this doesn't mean that you can not make those long long exposures like 30 seconds in this specific example that I really enjoy from my U.S trip we get this ethereal and mystical atmosphere where the water almost looks like fog or clouds among some very beautiful Cliffs so by all means you can definitely do it it's just about being a little bit deliberate about your artistic choices with the shutter speed and sometimes you of course need a fast shutter speed for the sake of showing what it is you actually want to show so on the left hand photo we have this Roaring River that flushes through the Northwestern American forests and on the right hand photo fossa in the Faroe Islands here with a lot of wind where if I had made a long exposure here first off the entire photo would have been blurred because it was so windy but the water would also have been one big blur even if I would have managed to keep the camera still because it was just blowing all over the place and you wouldn't have got the same sense of dry drama and in this photo here from Iceland I've used a shutter speed of only one sixth of a second but that was enough to get these streaks in the water when the water was pulling back out you can also see a used ISO 50 and F20 so my estimated case is I've probably been photographing this without a filter that is why F20 usually I say you should probably not shoot at F20 but sometimes if you have to do it you have to do it you can always sharpen in post-processing and you can generally also see on my photos that I really enjoy making Central compositions now a lot of photographers think that Central compositions or learn the central compositions are boring personally I really like them they focus the eye and they can definitely bring a lot of drama if your surroundings are dramatic Central compositions versus off-center compositions is something I discussed in my second ebook on composition so if you want to learn even more about composition be sure to get those ebooks there are links to them down in the description of the video they are super easy to read they have energy of examples so you should be able to get to the point very fast I always hate when I buy an ebook and there's just so much text and it takes forever for the author to actually get to the point so I have tried to design my ebooks so they're easy to read and comprehend not because I'm lazy but because I'm a teacher and I know how short people's attention span is links down in the description so this next mistake is also want to see and it's a compositional mistake and it is about stopping your visual flow so this year is a very typical photo from the Danish Countryside we have some rural landscape we have a field then we have a line of trees and then we have the sky this year is by no means a good photo however it is really good to illustrate what I mean so we have our main subject which is the field here in front or it could have been something in the sky but we have this big dark line right in the middle of the frame that separates the foreground from the background or from the sky and because it's so dark it pulls a lot of attention but it's basically the only thing in the photo that we do not want to show so you can see what I did instead I took a low perspective so I could show both the sky the drama in the sky and I could show the right field in front in this older photo of mine all the way back from like spring of 2015 I found this little boat corridor whole thing and they work as leading lines that lead us into here and then we basically just have like a line of clouds we also have a little bit here along the horizon some land here in the background and it stops us from viewing the sky up here basically just getting pulled into this also we have the sunset going on over here and some more land and that is again Edge Patrol from the first mistake you want to avoid that even though we follow the lines down here our eyes end up over here and not in the sky so yeah it's just a messy and confusing photo here's another example beautiful beautiful sunset beautiful clouds and we have a boat here in front we have a little bit of a reflection from the clouds however we have this line of trees on the opposite side of the Fjord that just takes so much attention and stops the visual flow it divides the photo in the upper part and in the lower part if we compare to this photo I had some low hanging moaning Mist here that kind of obscures the land and the background here so we don't have that same separation between the foreground the lower part of the photo and the other part of the photo so definitely be aware of the visual flow in your photo other lines that obscure the visual flow of the photo so the next big mistake that I don't really see it because I can't see it because people kind of miss it and that's the point that you miss the moment because you are not ready so in this example here from my last trip to the Pharaoh Islands I did not make a video on this channel from this trip however we got some beautiful conditions at this famous place in the Pharaoh Islands I went to the lower perspective we had these waves hitting the cliff walls and they kind of made this Whiplash effect where they just like exploded and it was all about capturing that moment being ready so I found my composition and luckily more waves came in so I had several chances to actually capture that moment and I was ready to just Hammer off whenever these waves hit so with the fast continuous shutter mode and in this example here from a couple of weeks back I knew that a big storm front was coming in over Denmark so it was all about getting out and getting ready I had one location in mind that I checked out first however it just didn't work and then it was all about Panic so I really drove around the countryside and luckily I found this foreground here instead that worked really really well so even though I were prepared I wasn't prepared enough however I was lucky and I got this photo and in this photo here which is one of my all-time favorite photos from Denmark I saw the birds come flying in from the right I only managed to get into the camera changed from a two second shot of delay to a single frame I should probably have changed to a continuous shooting but I simply just panicked in that moment luckily I did not panic so much that I did not capture the moment so I hit the shutter exactly at at the right spot when the birds were right between the two background trees and yes this was the only shot I got of these birds so even though I weren't mentally ready for it I was in that state where I knew my camera enough so I could change from a two second shot of delay because there was no chance I would have been able to capture it so precisely with that to the regular single frame shutter mode where I just had to hit the shutter and then get the shot and this photo here I came driving past this place with James pupsis and we immediately recognized that there was a composition right here it was all about just waiting for the light and we could see that on the background clouds there was a decent chance that the light would come out so we waited and luckily enough the light came out and you can see how big of a difference it makes to just wait five minutes and hope that the light will come out and when it comes out it just makes the photo so much better here two more examples from the same place a little bit different for foreground but again here you can see how big of a difference it makes to capture the moment when the light is actually out wait for the light so before we continue I just want to go through a few different photos where I summarize what we have learned so far and thank you to solve digital for sponsoring this week's video so this here is my brand new Soul digital professional line photo book and I've collected my favorite photos from 2018 in this one here and as we open up the photo book you can see it just looks absolutely gorgeous on this glossy photo paper and it has this lay flat effect however talking about the photos you can really see here how I have used some of the things that I've talked about in the video so far clean edges it is just utterly important you see there's just nothing along the edges that drags too much attention in these photos here I've also been very deliberate about my shutter speeds you can see I still have a little bit of texture in the water here in front and speaking of deliberate shutter speeds in this scene here I've actually made it a very fast shutter speed because I wanted to capture all the seagulls I wanted to capture all the snow in the air and it simply just gives a much more yeah realistic and cold and rough sense for this photo here and if we go to this photo here you can really also see how I've captured the moment how the waterfall is being blown back up here in the Pharaoh Islands and I've been deliberate about the fast shutter speed so I don't get like blurred texture of the waves and if you want to get entire 50 off from any cell digital products just like a photo book like this you can use the link in description of the video oh and speaking of capturing the moment you can also create your own moment so with time blending as you can see in this example this is a photo that is a combination of many different photos I think at least seven that I've captured over a time span of half an hour and then I blended it all together in Photoshop and speaking of Photoshop the next mistake is an editing mistake and it is to not have a proper lighting roll off from the lighter parts of your photo to the mid tones so let me give you an example here so we have this photo here from before I just press Auto and it finds an average editing here you can see up here in the clouds like this here is a bracketed photo and I took the Overexposed but it is to show you how you can see here in the clouds they are clipped the highlights are clipped there is just no information there when I pull down the exposure they just stay this murky White Collar what you want to have a proper roll off from the brighter Parts here of the clouds to the darker parts and you can do that in a few different ways first off do not push the highlights all the way down here so you can actually see these hard edges but what you can do is to introduce a little bit of negative Clarity either with let's say a linear gradient so we go down here and put in some negative Clarity and you can see it just gives a little bit of it's kind of like an awesome effect but it gives us a proper roll-off maybe a little less contrast and obviously optimally you should make sure that you have those details when you photograph but if you did not get them then at the very least make sure that when you do edit your photos that you cannot see these very sharp edges between the clouds where you do have information and a clouds where you do not have information another example here is with a sunrise so if we pull down the exposure we pull down the highlights we pull up the Shadows we make sure we can see a little bit more we add some contrast and then we want to darken down that Sky there because we want drama drama drama pull down the exposure and suddenly we have a very very strong Sun I would definitely pull back that effect with the linear gradient here pull it back so the sun is not as sharp again we can introduce a little bit of negative Clarity to have a little bit of a better roll off from the highlights of the sun here and into the sky it's just very important that you do not make sure that the sun is just like one round orb which is just wide or clipped and the Sun is usually clipped because simply just doesn't look natural that's not how nature looks to the eye of course editing is completely subjective it really is I truly believe that I'm very liberal about editing but when I look at landscape photos I want to at the very least buy it in the sense that you respect the light you respect the atmosphere and it looks somewhat natural and if you want to learn even more about landscape photography post processing be sure to enroll in my big Photoshop landscape photographers post-processing course here I show all my tips and techniques in a 19 hours plus course with 10 startup in tutorials a big section with all the different tools many different ways you can dodge and burn many different ways you can control and use atmosphere and glow different ways to use Luminosity mask in both blending photos together but also editing with Luminosity masks how to focus stack how to focus length blend and much much much more be sure to use the coupon code down in the description below to get 45 off now one of the biggest mistakes that I have made as a landscape photographer is to not explore my local neighborhood when I actually started to become interested in landscape photography I was so focused on getting out traveling going to Iceland going to the US going to lowfortune really just out in the world however I have later found out that I've missed out on so many gems that I simply just didn't know it existed in my local neighborhood obviously you should follow your passion you should follow what you want to do with your landscape photography if traveling is a big part of that well that's where you are in your journey but I would still recommend that you go out and explore your local neighborhood because you're probably the only one who actually goes out and explores your local neighborhood so that you can find all these beautiful gems now there's no doubt that the vast majority of my all-time favorite photos are some I have taken in my local neighborhood here in Denmark so on to the seventh and last mistake you definitely want to avoid and it is all about undefined or messy foregrounds so in this photo here of a big dramatic sky that I turned black and white yes it's I guess a nice guy but look at the foreground it's just there's just nothing there like it's just a landscape taken from a car it's just messy and under find and it's not a holistic photo I haven't thought about everything it was just like nice rain shoot like this is still boring here I have some beautiful Northern Lights however the foreground again it's just Barren Icelandic landscape it's completely undefined there's nothing in the foreground of interest and if we compare to this photo here taken on the same night at the very least I have the lake there in the mid ground and I have the crater formation in the foreground you can see how big of a difference it actually makes to the photo that you have some kind of defined foreground something that is also a little bit of Interest or secondary to look at in your photo besides your main subject the big display of Northern Lights especially on beaches I see again and again and again and I also do this sometimes you just get a messy Beach but you have to ask yourself whether the photo is even worth taking then personally I would say in this case here yes the photo was worth taking however you can see how messy the foreground is there in the sand with couch tracks and footsteps it's just not really that good looking again what you can do you can go down to a lower perspective at the very least even though there is a lot of like cluttered wet sand you at the very least don't see car tracks or Footprints so be sure to benefit from the 50 off on any salt digital products via the link down in the description if you want to learn more about conversation or editing be sure to either get my ebooks or enroll in my Photoshop landscape photographers post processing course and as always I would highly appreciate both a like and a comment I hope you learned something from this video

Channel: Mads Peter Iversen

Views: 1,006,892

Keywords: photography, landscape photography, photography for beginners, photography mistakes, photography tips, photography tips for beginners, improve your photography, photography basics, photography composition, how to photography, landscape photography tips, photography tutorials, photography tutorials for beginners, landscape photography tutorial, photography what to know, how to basic, how to landscape photography, 7 photography mistakes, landscape photography mistakes

Id: 9-NPg7ppk2I

Length: 19min 31sec (1171 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 12 2023