Five Mistakes Photographers Make and How to Fix Them

No photographer is perfect, and we all makes mistakes from time to time that detract from the quality and power of our images. This helpful video details five such mistakes and what you can do to fix them to create more powerful and emotive photos.

Coming to you from Sawyer Hartman, this great video details five mistakes photographers commonly make and how you can fix them. Of the five, one that particularly resonated with me was creating compositions that are too busy and visually overwhelming. No matter what genre you shoot, it can be tempting to rely on the subject matter to impress your viewer, and in turn, that leads to a tendency to want to shove as many interesting things into the frame as possible. And of course, fascinating subject matter can make a difference, but it's important to refine your compositional sense so you can better control the frame in a more intentional manner. Often, this means working to simplify your compositions rather than add more to them, as having too much in the frame can cause the viewer's eye to wander from what you want it to focus on. Check out the video above for more common mistakes and what you can do to fix them. 

Alex Cooke's picture

Alex Cooke is a Cleveland-based portrait, events, and landscape photographer. He holds an M.S. in Applied Mathematics and a doctorate in Music Composition. He is also an avid equestrian.

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10 Comments

Another video. No thanks

right?

It's pretty low-class to show so many famous photos without giving credit.

This is trash.

I'm suprised. Actually very good tips.

One mistake photographers make is using other photographers' work.

Fstoppers really shouldn't be promoting any videos where other peoples images are used without permission or credits.

Gordon

'...So by the end of this video you should have an entirely new approach to photography that'll make you more creative; a better shooter and just an overall better photographer...'

Wow, all that after watching a 10 minute video. Mr Hartman musty surely be one of the most talented photographers and teachers I have ever followed.

Hey fstoppers,

I really like reading through your website and enjoy going through it when using it on flipboard.
But you really need to curb it with the videos.

I don't know if you pay Alex by article quantity and not by quality, but 6 articles with a bit of text linking to a video each is really too much.

This whole "featured video" thing is really getting out of hand especially if you start featuring guys like the one of this particular one that does not give credit when using images.

Not cool.

Rather than blindly post links to YouTube videos, I think that fstoppers should show a bit more professionalism and give its readers (viewers!) the lowdown on who the person is that they're recommending we watch; their qualifications; experience; background and WHY we should invest our time in supporting them. So much content shoved our way is time-wasting, bland, naive pap. Come on fstoppers. Time to raise the bar.

Mistake #1: Creating videos for no good reason.