3 Reasons You Are Not Getting the Photos You Want

I hear it every day.

In my Face­book Group, with my friends and stu­dents first start­ing out, pho­tog­ra­phers begin­ning on their jour­ney strug­gle to get the images they want.

Or maybe if every once in awhile they get those images, they can’t con­sis­tent­ly repeat it. 

If you feel like this, real­ize many oth­ers do too and that you aren’t alone. Every­one feels this way at the begin­ning, and I did too!

The rea­sons you are feel­ing frus­trat­ed are usu­al­ly the same for every­one. Today I am going to break down the 3 rea­sons you are not get­ting the pho­tos you want, every time you take a picture.

Reason 1: You Are Using Automatic Camera Settings

You need to get that cam­era off of auto! I was ter­ri­fied of man­u­al mode when I first start­ed out. I would do every­thing I could to avoid it until I real­ized that if I want­ed full cre­ative con­trol over the way my images looked, I had to break free of auto. 

You don’t ask some­one to start build­ing a bird­house with­out them know­ing how the tools work. You can’t ful­ly under­stand how your cam­era works and until you shoot in man­u­al mode: how ISO, shut­ter speed, and aper­ture work together. 

Man­u­al mode is where you get to tell your cam­era how exposed you want your image to be, where you want the focus to be, you get to con­trol the end prod­uct! Once you learn to take con­trol of your cam­era and learn man­u­al mode, you will nev­er look back. You will often won­der why you wait­ed so long to join The Begin­ners Pho­tog­ra­phy Essen­tials Bun­dle.

Reason 2: You Buy More and More Camera Equipment

You think that the more equip­ment that you buy, the bet­ter your pho­tos will be. I was chat­ting with some­one this week­end. She was telling me about all of the cam­era equip­ment that she had pur­chased, yet she was still not get­ting the pho­tos she want­ed. Don’t think that because you have the lat­est and great­est cam­era equip­ment, your pho­tos will turn out like you want them. 

Like I men­tioned ear­li­er, you would­n’t build a bird­house if you did­n’t know how the tools work. Just because you have the fan­cy tools, it still does­n’t help if you don’t know how to use them. Spend your mon­ey on learn­ing your craft rather than the kit.

Reason 3: You Are Shooting for the Location, Not the Light

You need to shoot for the light and not the loca­tion! My stu­dents hear me say this all of the time! If you learn how to use the light and make it work for you, you will nev­er again think, “Oh, I can’t take pic­tures today, the light is bad!”

Light is where the mag­ic hap­pens in your pho­tos. You can cre­ate amaz­ing pho­tos in low light. Light is used to help cre­ate mood and to tell your sto­ry in your images. Don’t ever shy away from a not-so-per­fect light­ing sit­u­a­tion. All light is good if you learn how to make it work for you!

If you can relate to any of the rea­sons I’ve list­ed above, you are mak­ing things a lot more com­pli­cat­ed than it has to be. 

Do you want to get the pho­tos that you want in weeks rather than years? Then take a look at The Begin­ners Pho­tog­ra­phy Essen­tials Bun­dle and see how easy it can be. 

And know that every pho­tog­ra­ph­er start­ing out feels the exact same frus­tra­tions that you do, but you have already tak­en that first step, now all you have to do is keep going!