Stephen Walton Photography Workshops

While more and more people take up photography as a hobby almost as many find their camera gathering dust in a cupboard or listed on eBay.

I’ve put together a list of 7 reasons why photographers fail to reach their goals and how you can avoid these pitfalls.

1. Good Photographers Don’t Skip the Basics

This reason is number one for a purpose – have you ever seen anything be a success without great foundations? Houses? Skyscrapers? Families? To progress as a photographer you need to master the basic knowledge of key areas.

Spend time learning about the exposure triangle and how it changes your photo. While it may seem like a drag on the surface without this foundational education you’ll never know why you’re altering settings. Instead, you’ll be pushing buttons randomly and hoping it’ll start to look better on the camera screen eventually.

Read your camera manual too. While learning the universal pillars of photography, knowing about your specific camera is vitally important. If you don’t know what your camera can do you’ll never be using it to its full potential.

2. Bad Photographers Blame Their Camera

A poor workman blames his tools. This is very true of photographers sometimes and its a habit that needs to be reviewed.

Every camera has limitations – whether you spend hundreds or thousands on it, there’ll be limits to its performance. If a camera isn’t capturing exactly what you see, it doesn’t mean you need to upgrade. There may be other reasons why.

While the camera is hub of all the computerisation and rendering of digital photos these days it’s still important to put the best possible glass infront of it. Your camera may be perfectly adequate but fronted by a poor lens. Think about upgrading kit and cheaper lenses when possible to a quality prime or zoom.

Think about the focal lengths you use regularly and get the best lens you can afford that covers those lengths. Its better to have one great lens than 3-4 poor ones. Having less lenses doesn’t make you a bad photographer, but believing that needing more for the sake of it does.

3. Spend Quality Time Editing Photos

Whether you accept editing as a part of photography or not this is still a big factor as to why photographers fail.

Approaching the world of photo editing as a big scary beast strikes the wrong tone. Editing a picture can be done on apps with your phone or tablet. You don’t always need big desktop computers to make the right changes.

Apps like Lightroom Mobile, Snapseed, VSCO and others are simple ways to make changes to your shots. When you feel ready to move on to bigger versions of editing software such as Photoshop and Affinity you can, but if you are getting good results doing it on your phone, why change?

It doesn’t really matter how you edit, as long as the final article looks how you want it. Make sure you check all your corners and edges for distracting elements.

4. Don’t Compare Your Photography

This is a sin we all have made as photographers at some point, but if left unchecked it can cause people to leave the hobby entirely. Deflating confidence and feeling overwhelmed come from directly comparing your photos to someone else’s. This is crazy.

Without knowing their background you could be a beginner wanting to be as good as a seasoned pro after a few months. Nothing good comes from making baseless comparisons.

Scrolling idly on Instagram at other photographers can sometimes feel depressing. Remember that you’re on a different path from them at the moment, so don’t try to beat yourself up so early on in your photography.

Instead, turn your photo envy or jealousy into a goal.

5. Set Yourself a Photography Goal to Succeed

This leads nicely to our next reason why photographers fail – being aimless. Never setting yourself a goal means your running down a path with no end or milestone insight. Imagine how deflating it would be to run down a road like that?

Instead, you should be setting yourself markers to achieve during the week, month or year. They can be big or small, and progressively more technical or challenging.

For a beginner photographer it could be something like;

– Reading your camera manual
– Learning the exposure triangle
– Shooting in any mode but auto
– Going on a workshop
– Taking a course

Your goal could just be to get yourself into a more creative mindset. Visit an art exhibition, read some photo books or listen to interviews with photographers. Whatever way you do it, set yourself a goal and when you’ve completed it, set another.

6. Photographers Need to be Passionate

Photography is an art form just like painting, drawing, dancing, sculpting and singing. All these disciplines require passion and excitement to make the artist successful.

When you start out as a beginner photographer with a brand-new camera you’ll either shoot anything and everything with no structure, or be too scared to get started. Be the former.

Even if your first 1,000 photos are crap at least you took them and you’ve got a platform to progress from. Of course, after time, you’ll get lulls in your inspiration and motivation as a photographer which you’ll need to deal with.

But when you are riding high on the purple patch of creativity embrace it and don’t put the camera down. It’s only by looking back at earlier photos can you see your progression which can be a great boost to confidence and motivation.

7. Buy The Right Camera Equipment

With the number of beginner photographers growing year on year the market for cameras, lenses and accessories swell with it. This requires companies to get creative with new gadgets and clever marketing to sell. Don’t always fall for the new sparkly toy!

While it may be appealing to buy a set of 8 ND filters with a bonus cleaning kit and extra lens caps – do you really need them? It’s not wise to overload your camera bag with accessories you’ll rarely need. If buying more kit makes you happy, that’s fine, just make sure it’s the RIGHT kit you need.

If you’re taking images you’re happy with, you may not need to upgrade your kit. Instead, assess what you feel can really help you grow in the future (a drone, new lens, website, etc) and invest adequately.

Did You Enjoy This?

Let me know what you thought about these 7 reasons photographers fail? Have you almost fallen foul of any? Do you think there is any more that I’ve missed? I’d love to know.