This whole post is cringeworthy for me, but I had to find some examples of the most common photography mistakes I see being made. I honestly still make some of these mistakes myself, so don’t feel bad if you do too. Luckily, they are easy to fix and avoid all together with a little bit of mindfulness.
Over or under saturation / unnatural skin tones~
Just look at how unnaturally green this foliage is! The skin tone is also terribly off. It’s really easy to get carried away and amp up (or down) the saturation making some colors look totally off. I end up making this mistake a lot when trying to really bring out the blue spring waters or when adjusting greens that have a tendency to easily get too bright and neon looking. If you find yourself doing this often, try to save the photo before posting it and then come back to it at a later time with fresh eyes. Take your time while editing to make sure you haven’t adjusted the colors so much that they look unnatural.
Not removing ‘junk’ from your photos ~
Sometimes a photo would just look better if you edited a few things out before sharing the final image. Some examples of things you might want to remove from a photo include people, trash, signs, fences and rope barriers. In the example above I should have removed the warning sign on the railing. I use the healing tool in Snapseed most often to simply recreate over any unwanted elements.
Poor composition ~
Check out this post for more composition tips as poor composition is the quickest way to kill your photo’s potential. This was a video still I pulled from a GoPro video shot by a child. Maybe you can tell, it’s got my feet cut off and it’s blurry.
Not paying attention to the background ~
This is the best example I could find of a photo with a background that is a little cluttered. Sometimes, you can blur the background, but a simple change in your angle while shooting is all that’s needed to easily improve the background. Just be mindful when shooting and look behind your subject for other people or elements that take away from the main subject or add too much visual clutter. You also want to make sure there is nothing behind them like a tree that might appear to be coming straight out of someone’s head.
Not editing your photos at all ~
It’s probably the photographer in me, but it pains me to see friends posting unedited images. I can’t help but look at them and think “if only they cropped it”, “if only they applied a quick preset or increased the details it would be that much ‘ better’ of a photo.” A little bit of editing can act as fairy dust even on poor quality mobile phone photos as seen above. I would suggest reading this post where I share some of my top mobile phone editing techniques so you can learn to improve your photos easily and quickly.
Blown out or over-exposed skies ~
Sometimes, I end up with a great photo and a sky that is over exposed and looks white or has a weird glare. I’ve shared this tip before, but replace the sky! You can do this easily in the Pixaloop or Quickshot apps.
I hope these tips help you improve your photography hobby. Have a w0ndeful day!