How to sell photography

Best Ways To Make Money Selling Photography:

What are the most common mistakes made by beginner photographers?

I'm particularly interested in mistakes made while using a digital camera. I guess I should add that I'd like to know mistakes in *picture taking*, such as direction of the sun, ISO etc... rather than plain moronic reasons, like leaving the cap on.

Public Comments

1. Leaving the lens cap on?
2. Losing the camera.
3. becoming a photographer
4. fingers over the screen!!
5. Zooming in too close. Not holding still when you have to zoom in very close.
6. wrong angles
7. not buying an appropriate sized memory stick
8. havin the shudder speed set at a speed you arent ready for such as you may have it to slow anad if you arent that still with your camera it can get blurry and so on...
9. Not framing a picture is a common mistake. To have a good picture, your subject needs context. That means a foreground, a middleground, and a background. If you take a picture of a pretty rock, you should probably also get the tree in front of it and the river behind it....
10. Size options. Most people will have it at the largest size. Then later when they try to put it on the computer it can take forever. OR my favorite, trying to upload them onto templates online or use them for photo sharing sites when there are size limitations.
11. 1.Leaving the lens cover on. 2.Taking pictures at bad angles. 3.Losing/breaking your camera. 4.Forgetting to bring your roll of film. 5.Not much memory left on your camera for taking pictures. 6.If you have a digital camera then it would be low battery.
12. If your shooting on a manual setting (which I would suggest learning how to do to give you a more complete understanding of the art) watch for things like what's in the background.exposure time. lighting,aperture setting etc... If not then the instructions that come with the camera will explain a lot or go to the library and take out a book or video on the subject.
13. The BIGGEST mistake most beginner photographers make (assuming they want to be professional photographers) is getting the cheapest equipment possible rather than the least expensive QUALITY camera. There are a lot of cheap digital cameras out there on the market but quite a lot of the cheap ones can not create an image that is high enough quality for professional work. Make sure to do some research into the equipment you buy rather than just grabbing a $25-$100 camera from wal-mart. You don't have to go to the other extreme buy the $500+ models either. You just need to make sure that what you buy can produce quality images. Then before you try to charge for services, take lots of pictures with your camera in lots of different lightings and try out the various settings. The more familiar you are with your camera settings the easier it is to chose which settings to use for each lighting situation (the second biggest mistake made..wrong settings for the lighting conditions). Also you can check your local community colleges for classes. Those are great for giving you an idea of what makes for good composition of a photograph (community college courses are fairly inexpensive and well worth it)
14. using photoshop instead of re-taking shots, and not reading the manual, ☺ ..
15. I'd say the biggest is composition and as another answerer wrote, framing is very important. A photograph must tell a story and at the very least lead the eye of whomever looks at it to the one point that you desire for them to see. I think that's the hardest part [for me] of being any kind of photographer whether you are a professional or an amateur. You can read all the right books, go to all the right classes, know all the functions of your camera and how to use them, but if you can't compose and frame your shot right, it'll be no different than your average snapshot, despite knowing all of those things. It takes time and work to find out what about your work will appeal to others, or yourself. When you at least grasp that concept, you won't be considered a beginner anymore. And it would also help if you remembered where you put your lens caps, nevermind leaving them on. You can't see out of the viewfinder with the cap on, so I don't really consider that a real mistake. But leaving a 67mm nikon lens cap somewhere on the beach only to discover later you have no idea where it went and you now have an $800 lens with no cap and a replacement costs $30, you'll learn pretty quick not to misplace one again. That's what learning is all about, you make mistakes, but you must realize that isn't a penalty against you. Mistakes are an important part of our personal and intellectual development because when we make them and they cost us more than we'd like, we learn and we don't make them again. As a beginner, leave all of your camera settings on auto, like shooting mode, white balance, and ISO. When you learn how each of those can effect your photographs, then you can play around with them. The MOST common beginner mistake is NOT reading your camera's instruction manual. Food for thought...
16. Failing to read the camera's manual is a big mistake. Not being comfortable with your camera (and i agree about getting a cheap camera as well) can mean not being comfortable with your pictures and having to do a lot of outside editing. Digital cameras offer a lot of different features and since most people dont take the time to read the manual, most of them go unused. It is important to have some kind of knowledge of what a slower shutter speed or aperture will do to your shots. And when to use the flash. Also agree with the focus point thing. Some people take pictures of something and dont focus on an object so the viewer's eyes wander and the picture looks ordinary. Framing is important. With something like photography (an art) there’s alway room for mistakes and not everyone is going to agree that one picture is fabulous, but there are some things all photographers should have some knowledge off. Good luck!
17. Mistakes OR lessons to be learned?
18. My photo teacher said he would refuse to look at any pictures people turned in of traintracks, grave yards, kittens, and babies. They are so overdone, it's rediculous. I laughed, but you know what, he was telling the truth. On another note, there are no shortcuts to learning good photography. Sure, you may take a really good picture with a point and shoot digital camera, but to be able to reproduce good results, you have to know WHY the picture is good and how the camera took the picture. Learning on manual settings with a good book and the camera's manual is the best way to learn before you use any automation.