The Ten Most Common Photographic Mistakes

The Best Article Every Day is an aggregator-blog, collecting insightful and provocative posts from all over the blogosphere. It has also become a solid fixture on my personal A-list of blogs I read most days.

The Ten Most Common Photographic Mistakes is a post they highlighted recently, from Andre Gunther’s excellent photography blog. It’s the sort of piece that qualifies for the “if you only read one piece of photographic advice this year, read this,” kind of commendation. There’s a lot of constructive advice here for the novice and not a little to get the more experienced photographer thinking about what they do.

Although I’ve looked at great photos and works of art all my life, it’s only recently that I’ve started to look hard at and think about the objects I photograph before activating the shutter. I’ve taken some decent images in the past, but typically they only came on occasions where I was immersed in travel (e.g., whilst on safari). I’ve learnt that (just like music), photography initially appears to be about technique and technology, but is actually about thought and process. Taking a few moments to observe something or someone in their context, to consider the light and environment and to think about where to shoot from can make a stunning difference.