Recently while I was looking at a video about bad habits in photography. It seemed like an interesting video, so I took a look at it.
Here is the video if you want to look at it check it out here, 9 WORST HABITS In Landscape PHOTOGRAPHY
It got me thinking. Some of the points in the video probably apply to most of us, and some do not.
His video is specifically for landscape photography, but I’m going to look at photography in general. I do landscape photography, but I do lots of other stuff as well.
So let’s look at some of my bad habits.
Forgetting to check the settings on my camera
I do this one constantly. I ruined a time-lapse on the weekend because I didn’t look to see if I was in manual or aperture priority mode. I wanted to be in manual and my camera was set in aperture priority, so by the time I realised the sunrise was gone.
It doesn’t take long to do, but always seems to be something that I forget. I don’t know how many times I’ve made a photo outing useless because I didn’t look to see that I had my ISO turned up a lot. Or not realising that the last time I used the camera I had set the images to jpegs instead of raw. So frustrating.
Being lazy
This one is going to pretty much cover the rest. I do believe that many of my problems are due to laziness.
Not changing lenses
Changing lenses can take a bit of effort at times. You have to get the backpack off your back and then get out the lens. Hope you can change it without getting too much dirt on your sensor. Put it away and then put the backpack back on your back. It can just seem too much at times.
I have been trying to get better and better with it. It isn’t unheard of now for me to change my lens once or twice, sometimes even more. Still, it is a struggle for me.
Not stopping to take a photo
This is something I have always done and still do.
I don’t know how many times I’ve thought that would make a great shot and then I never take it. I will drive past it and think if I really want it I will do it another time, then I never go back.
Sometimes it gets to the point where things change so much that even if I wanted to take it it is too late.
I remember a front garden here that was all trees, but every autumn there was a tree against those green ones that would go this brilliant orange colour. It was such a contrast against the other trees. I always thought it would make a great photo. Guess what. I never took it and now all the trees are gone.
I missed the opportunity.
Not weeding photos
By this, I mean going through a folder of photos after I’ve been out and deleting (weeding) the photos I know I don’t want or are multiples. I can end up with too many photos, in fact, I have that problem now.
I promised Dave that if he got me more storage that from now on I would do this before I move my photos to the NAS, our backup system. So far so good, so hopefully I have finally broken this bad habit. Time will tell.
Chimping?
This is going through the photos on the back of your camera. Apparently, it is a bad habit. I do it all the time, but I don’t quite understand why it is a bad habit.
I do it to check my images and make sure that I am getting decent ones. It is one of the things that I love about digital, you can check composition and exposure.
Many years ago I took 3 rolls of film of my daughters and for two of them, I used a flash. I forgot to set the flash sync speed so two rolls were taken and the exposures were bad. It was a waste of money and time. If I could have seen the photos as I was taking them I would have released what I had done. Now you don’t have to worry about setting that because the camera does it for you when you attach your flash.
Digital and the screen is fantastic, so I don’t care if I chimp. I will keep doing it.
Not getting out of bed
This is definitely a bad habit I have. It could be a good morning, but I think I can do it another morning. Or perhaps the weather isn’t that great today so I will go another morning. All the excuses.
I am fairly sure I am not the only one that suffers from this. It can be so hard getting out of bed in the morning, for any reason really.
So what are your bad habits? Do you have any? What about things that I haven’t mentioned?
Good roundup, Leanne. Been there, done that with all. Iāve learned to do a quick chimp looking through the viewfinder on my Fuji, especially when itās sunny. The other ākick myselfā is not staying with a subject long enoughā¦sometimes I just have one good shot and I wonder, āwhy didnāt I shoot more??ā Although really, one keeper is all you need! š
Thank you Jane. I know what you are talking about, and I don’t think there is anything wrong with chimping, especially to see if a shot has worked. What is the point of the screen on the back if you can’t do that. I have similar with the subject, and sometimes wish I had moved slightly or something like that. š
Great post! Sadly I have some of those habits as well .. youāve got me thinking though š
What would a hobby be without bad habits, lol. I hope your thinking is good Julie, thank you.
Some of the ‘bad’ in your list I’ll excuse as the price of being imperfectly human, so… shrug. But I’ll agree that ‘not weeding’ and ‘not getting out of bed’ are bad. Mostly bad, quite often bad. And apply to more than photography!
I love the imperfectly human, so very true Penny. Also so very true about getting out of bed, it is hard here at the moment because it has been so cold. Thank you Penny.
Guilty as charged. I think we often know that we allow our bad habits to continue, but it’s nice to have someone point it out. This causes us to hold ourselves (and each other) accountable. Then we can break the cycle.
Some cycles are good to break, but others I’m not that bothered.I just want to have fun with it all really. Yeah, I’m just making more excuses, lol. Thank you.
Guilty on many counts, but some Iām not sorry, but and chimping is one of those. I do get up early, but I am very guilty of passing by opportunities for neat photos and thinking that I will go back later to do it. Like you I rarely do. Some are faults. Some are nicely defined under laziness.
I have to agree, I really don’t think chimping is bad. I have a theory about the driving past things Ceci, I think I mustn’t really want the image, or I would do it. I like that excuse. Thank you Ceci.
Uh, oh! I am guilty of a few of those. š
Yeah, it seems most of us are Pepper. Thank you.
Guilty on all counts but I’m getting better at chimping. I think the main objection to this is that is runs the battery down very quickly (so I carry a spare battery with me always and try to do the chimping when I’m back home or in the hotel and near a re-charging plug. Oh,weeding out. I can only throw out the really, really bad ones!
I get the battery thing, but I always carry many batteries, though I’ve never really found it to be a problem with chimping. I just want to make sure I have a good exposure. Weeding is a necessary thing unless you want to spend thousands of dollars on storage. I can’t do it, I need to get better and I think I am. Thank you for your thoughts Maris, I got your other comments as well, but will delete them. It can take me a while to approve and respond to comments.
Haha, we can all be guilty of a few of these!
so true Sue, I think we all are. Thank you.
š
I’m with you on the “chimping”…
Okay, fine, I can see the argument that you could miss out on opportunities by checking your settings/exposure/image/histogram after a shot. But the shot is just as ‘missed’ if I took it with unacceptable or unsalvageable settings. I guess, according to these people, it’s “less missed” with bad exposure settings… I dunno.
I think there is chimping and there is chimping. Do I spend a tonne a time doing it, no, I will check quickly to make sure the image looks okay and then I move on. Though it has to be said how do you know if you missed a shot if you were too busy chimping lol. I would prefer good exposures. I’ve done enough bad ones to know that often you can’t overcome them. Thank you Matt.
I used to chimp (new word I learnt) all the time. Now I don’t at all. I should really find a balance. And as for weeding photos, I should do it.
It is good to find a balance. I don’t continually go through my photos, but I will take a quick look to make sure it looks okay. Weeding is a good thing to do, well for me because I can’t that many photos. Thank you.
I am with you on
– Forgetting to change settings from previous use
– Not stopping for a photo
– I will always “chimp” (A new term for me) to see if the photo is what I wanted
– I am getting better at weeding
Good to hear about the weeding Brian. It is interesting how many of us have the same bad habits. Thank you.
Almost all of the above :(. Plus forgetting to check if the photo is well leveled.
Oh yes the levelling, I think I gave up with that, but then the Fujifilm has a level in it, and it works well. Thank you Svetlana.
I’m a bit of a minimalist so I shoot with 1 camera and 1 lens. Sony has a live view so I set my camera to ‘auto chimp’. Yup ‘I’ll go back for that shot’ has cost me many a good shot. As for never trashing a shot…. if you get rid of the bad ones how can you go back and learn from them?
My worst habit is when I let my ego lead me and shoot manually. There is many a time that my camera’s auto setting get me a better shot.
I have so many photos that I can’t keep them all, I don’t have enough storage, unfortunately. Interesting about the auto settings, I never use those, but that is me. Thanks for sharing that Brian.