When you’re starting out in photography, a lot of the frustration doesn’t come from a lack of gear or creativity. It comes from making simple mistakes that hold you back without you realizing it.
Coming to you from Pat Kay, this practical video highlights 10 mistakes that almost every beginner makes. One of the most common is trying to include too many subjects in a frame. It’s tempting to go wide and capture everything when you’re in a new place, but that often creates cluttered, confusing photos. Kay explains that learning to simplify a composition by focusing on one main subject helps you establish a visual hierarchy so the viewer knows exactly what to pay attention to. Another major point is who you choose to learn from. Beginners often swap advice with other beginners, but that can limit growth. Kay stresses the importance of finding mentors who are at least one step ahead: people with proven experience or recognition.
The video also looks at the technical side of mistakes. Shooting wide open at f/1.4 or f/1.8 all the time isn’t always the best choice, even if that’s why you bought the lens. Kay explains that most lenses aren’t at their sharpest wide open, and stopping down to f/5.6 or f/8 can give you sharper results with less vignetting and fewer aberrations. He also makes an important distinction between a stylistic choice and a mistake. A blurry image from poor focus or a slow shutter isn’t a creative mood; it’s an error. The key is building enough technical control to shoot sharp when you want to and then being able to break that sharpness intentionally when it serves your vision.
Beyond camera settings, Kay talks about habits that shape your development. One is shooting in burst mode and firing away in hopes of catching a good moment. That approach creates hundreds of throwaway shots and misses the deeper skill: anticipating the decisive moment before it happens. By slowing down and taking single, intentional shots, you train your eye to notice patterns, gestures, and timing in real life. Another habit to avoid is staying rooted in one spot. If you don’t move around a scene, you miss angles and opportunities. Experimentation not only gives you more options in the moment, it also trains you to quickly visualize strong compositions anywhere.
Kay also touches on style and editing. Style doesn’t emerge in your first couple of years; it develops after you’ve experimented with many subjects and approaches. Beginners often confuse editing presets with style, but the edit is only a small part of the process. He points out that photography should be about 70 to 80 percent in the field and 20 to 30 percent in post. Relying too heavily on editing to fix mistakes stunts growth and makes your workflow inefficient. Instead, getting it right in camera leads to faster, cleaner edits. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Kay.
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