Three Big Things Really Holding Back Your Photography

The foundation of success in anything you do is understanding what you should be doing and what you most certainly should not be doing. Are you guilty of these three issues holding your photography back?

With the advent of social media, particularly YouTube, help videos on every facet of life have really educated people in whatever pursuits they're passionate about. A perfect example is surfing. As recently as 20 years ago, there were no such things as coaches, or technique breakdowns, or how-to instructional guides. But now? Ex-pros can't line up quickly enough to bring out their own online video courses teaching you how to go from popping-up to getting spat out of gaping barrels over shallow reefs. One thing that's common in almost every genre is the most common mistakes people make that are holding them back.

And that brings us to this great video by Mike Smith, in which he introduces three important things really holding back your photography. I particularly liked the first one because he discusses a huge advantage of digital photography that many people ignore: taking lots of photos and not being afraid to experiment from different positions because you can easily delete them and no one but you will ever see them. I see so many people get to sites and shoot from a single position with a single lens at a certain angle. "Why not move around some more and play with different options," I always think to myself. Give the video a look and let me know the biggest mistake you see photographers most commonly making.

Iain Stanley's picture

Iain Stanley is an Associate Professor teaching photography and composition in Japan. Fstoppers is where he writes about photography, but he's also a 5x Top Writer on Medium, where he writes about his expat (mis)adventures in Japan and other things not related to photography. To view his writing, click the link above.

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