It’s easy to pick up a bad photography habit, but hard to shake it off. Whether it’s the way in which you always approach a subject or a camera setting you always forget to check, a habit can be irritating and have an impact on the enjoyment you get from taking photos. Let’s put an end to that in 2016! Here’s our take on some common photography mistakes and spoilers, and steps to take to kick them into touch…
1 Shooting first, fixing later
This has to be one of the hardest bad photography habits to ditch.
It’s easy to treat photo-editing software, and raw files in particular, as a safety net, fixing bad exposures or removing distractions digitally when they could have been excluded when the picture was taken.
But why not try and get it right in-camera – or as close to ‘right’ as you can?
For instance, setting an appropriate white balance for the lighting conditions and the effect you want to achieve will produce a more accurate preview picture and histogram. It’ll also give you less work to do when you process the image.
Getting the exposure close to what it should be is important even if you shoot raw. If you try to brighten a badly underexposed photo in software you’re going to end up with very noisy shadows. Totally blow the highlights in-camera and they’re going to remain that way, too.
SEE MORE: Getting it right in camera: what does that really mean?
2 Taking the same photos as everyone else
There’s nothing wrong with being influenced by the work of other photographers. After all, that’s how most of us learn how to improve. But copying another photographer’s pictures, whether consciously or unconsciously, can become a bad photography habit.
It’s hard not to come back with similar shots when the creative options are comparatively limited.
There are many angles to take when it comes to shooting a portrait, for example. Everything, from the location to the lighting to the way you interact with the person you’re photographing may be within your control.
On the other hand, you’ll have fewer options when it comes to shooting landscapes. There might only be one viewpoint to shoot from, for instance.
It can be challenging to come up with a unique photo when you’re faced with a landscape that’s been photographed to death.
For instance, how many shots of the Skógafoss waterfall in Iceland, taken from more or less the same spot with more or less the same photographic treatment have you seen?
Assuming you want to create a different image, it’s worth adopting the ‘one for them, one for me’ approach. Get the classic view out of the way early and then focus on finding a new angle, whether it’s a different focal length from the norm or a technique that spices things up.
SEE MORE: 10 ways photographers can think more like a pro
3 Winging it when it comes to shutter speed
Be honest, how many times have you pressed the shutter with a touch of ‘I’m sure it’ll be fine’ in mind?
And how many times you have you ditched soft photos where the shutter speed clearly wasn’t fast enough when you took the shot?
Clearly, there’s no harm in experimenting with slower shutter speeds. What’s the worst that can happen? You lose the odd frame here and there?
But if the majority of your low-light or long-lens pictures aren’t sharp because you were essentially winging it with low ISOs and slower-than-ideal shutter speeds, than it may be worth ditching the habit!
If you were raised on film photography, you may be reluctant to push the ISO because of quality issues, but, in the words of Shia LaBeouf, just do it! Make 2016 the year you explore your camera’s Auto ISO feature and turn out more sharper pictures than ever before…
SEE MORE: 8 textbook photography tips none of us really follow
4 Not cleaning your camera
Dirty camera, dirty pictures. That’s how the old photography saying goes, isn’t it?
Once the honeymoon period of owning a new camera or lens has passed, it’s tempting to let the cleaning regime slide. But is it really worth it?
A few minutes spent cleaning your camera sensor can prevent hours cloning dust spots from your photos.
Fail to keep lenses clean and you run the risk of increased flare. Not only that, but the acids in fingerprints can eat into the multi-coating on the front element.
Dirty electrical contracts on the camera and lens may lead to a camera malfunction just when you don’t need it.
And to top it all off, if you don’t keep your camera and lenses in tip-top condition, you reduce their value when it comes to trading them in or selling them on the secondhand market.
SEE MORE: 9 camera cleaning mistakes photographers make (and how to avoid them)
5 Blaming the camera for poor results
Who, at some point, hasn’t blamed their camera gear for not delivering the results – or used it as an excuse for not taking a shot?
Learn to work within the limitations of your camera. If it’s slow to focus, then give it a fighting chance by prefocusing, using the centre AF point and activating a compatible lens’s focus limiter switch to speed things up.
If the buffer fills quickly and the camera slows down in continuous shooting mode, try feathering the shutter release and shooting in short bursts rather than keeping the button pressed down.
Although there are some areas of photography that can benefit from specialist tools – such as long lenses for wildlife photography or close-up kit for macro pictures – that doesn’t mean you can’t think outside the box and try an alternative approach.
There’s a lot you can do with a standard kit lens. It might not be the sharpest or fastest piece of glass, but its unobtrusive nature and the natural look of its standard view enable you to capture pictures that bigger lenses and more extreme focal lengths can’t.
SEE MORE: 10 reasons your photos are blurry (and what you can do about it)
6 Not resetting the camera
If you’ve ever grabbed your camera and missed a shot because it didn’t seem to be focusing correctly or Mirror Lockup was activated, then chances are you’ve fallen out of the good habit of resetting your camera.
After you’ve finished shooting in a location, it’s always worth resetting the camera to a point-and-shoot state.
Using, say, Aperture Priority, Pattern metering, Auto ISO, High-speed drive and One-shot autofocus with the centre AF point highlighted as a default set up will work for many situations.
Cast an eye over the exposure scale in the viewfinder before you take a shot, too. If you haven’t reset any exposure compensation dialled in from a previous shot, and proceed to dial in further amounts, you may end up with grossly overexposed or underexposed photos. And no-one wants that…
SEE MORE: 7 routines that will make you a better photographer
7 Not regularly backing up your photo collection
As bad photography habits go, failing to make a back up a your photo library is hard to beat.
It’s one of those habits that you only realise is a terrible one when it’s too late to do anything about it.
To ensure that your photos aren’t lost forever, back them up regularly. And then do it again. And again. Three back-ups of your photo collection, each of which uses a different type of storage in a different location, is the best form or security
It might seem like overkill, but your future self will thank you…
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