5 Mistakes That Could Be Hurting Your Photography
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Loading... - ellis maisie
- 15 Sep 2022
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A common question I am frequently asked is “how did you learn how to process your photos?” I’ve been lucky enough to receive help from several skilled photographers in the past, I have watched many tutorial videos, but most of all, I have spent countless hours trying stuff out and experimenting with different techniques and adjustments.
Through all of this experimentation, I have learned how to achieve what I want to do, but I have also been able to learn a lot about what not to do. This is the reward of taking the long road while in pursuit of skill.
These are a few mistakes that could be hurting your photography:
#1 You’re adding way too much saturation
This is a common mistake that is super noticeable.
Sure, we have all seen those rare, radioactive skies in real life, but it is a dead giveaway when the rocks, plants, people, mountains, and the rest of the foreground also look like they’re out of Candyland.
Saturated and vibrant colors come from direct sunlight. Shadows or parts of your image that are not being hit by the sunlight should be cool and desaturated. After I have used curves and levels to adjust brightness and contrast in my images, they usually pull out so much color that I rarely need to add any saturation at all.
Before
After
#2 Your images are lacking tonality
It’s great to have warm light and highlights in an image but we all know you have lost control when the shadows and parts that aren’t getting hit by sunlight are just as warm.
This happens a lot when you try to enhance your sky to make it more red or colorful with a global adjustment (affecting the entire image). This results in your image looking much less interesting and lacking that nice contrast that comes from the separation between warm and cool tones. Warm tones advance, while cool tones recede.
Try creating a color mask or luminosity mask instead. Then you can affect only specific areas of the image rather than everything. Read More…
