Your Photos Aren’t Good Enough: Seven Traps That Possibly Caught You

There are seven common traps that many photographers fall into that rarely get spoken of. Does your work fall into any of these? Here’s how to spot them and escape their clutches.

1. They Lack Meaning

One of the hardest things that photographers struggle with is understanding what putting a story into their photos means. The story or narrative of a photo is what the image is trying to tell the viewer, and every photo has a story.

At its very simplest level, it can be “this is (insert subject here).” However, it becomes gradually more complex than that. For instance, the following photo depicts a gravestone turned over and partially covered with autumnal leaves. There are the first signs of foliage starting to cover it. So, it tells the story of neglect. Yet, you could also read into the idea that after we have died, like Ozymandias, we are ultimately forgotten as even our memorials disappear. So, the stories can be both literal and symbolic.

Abstract photos are the very opposite of literal images. They are figurative and rely on the viewer placing their interpretation on them. That interpretation we place on all photos won’t be the same as the photographer’s but will be swayed by their own life experiences and, not least, their intelligence. In this way, the viewers create their own story. For example, the gravestone photo might evoke more powerful emotions in someone recently bereaved than a young couple who meets in that churchyard for romantic reasons.

Meanwhile, those who live near the location of the lighthouse in the photo at the end of the next section will understand it differently from someone who has never seen it.

2. You Are Not Shooting at the Correct Distance.

It was the great Robert Capa who said that if your photos are not good enough, you are not close enough. Indeed, that is one of the major mistakes that many novice photographers make. They often fear getting close to the subject and filling the frame.

Getting near to whatever you are photographing usually excludes clutter from the picture in two ways. Firstly, it removes the stuff from around the subject, and secondly, it makes the depth of field shallower, so the background becomes blurrier and thus less distracting. Like all rules in photography, there is always a caveat.

Going back to what I was saying about creating a story in a photo, showing the subject as part of an environment can help make the subject compelling. For example, in the above image, despite its small size in the frame, the classic shape of the shag – a member of the cormorant family – drying out its wings is instantly recognizable to those who know their coastal birds. In the background, again small in the frame, is the unmistakable shape of a lighthouse that the bird seems to be looking at.

3. You Chose the Incorrect Lens

Standard kit consumer-grade zoom lenses often lack the quality and speed for producing images that push photography to its limits; most great images stretch those boundaries. Furthermore, their focal length range is often not ideal for the same reason. My advice to photographers buying a new camera is, unless it’s all you can afford, never get one with a low-quality kit lens. Buy the best lens for the photography you want to do.

Ideally, we choose the correct lenses for different photo types. Wide-angle lenses are considered best for landscapes, then the focal length increases for street photography and portraits, but if we photograph wildlife, sports, and other action shots it’s a longer lens we usually go for. Fast lenses with their wide apertures allow us to achieve faster shutter speeds, stopping action, and giving shallower depths of field.

But that doesn’t always have to be the case, of course. It’s perfectly reasonable to deliberately choose a different lens to illustrate a point and tell a story. For example, using a standard or wide-angle lens can add context to a wildlife photo, and landscapes shot with a telephoto lens, if done well, can be effective.

4. The Light Was Poor Quality

Light is everything when we take a photo. It completely changes the way the final image looks. Whether it is the low-angled golden light of dawn, the deep shadows cast in a forest in the midday sun, or the grays and whites of a foggy winter’s day, we want the light to work for us to create the image we want.

When photographing weddings, I hope for an overcast day to flatten out the light so there are no harsh shadows on people’s faces. Meanwhile, for capturing seascapes at sunrise, my bane is the big bank of thick cloud that often sits across the eastern horizon. It blocks the light from our local star. I wanted those golden rays bursting through, but instead, everything looked flat.

Nevertheless, I believe there’s no such thing as universally poor-quality light. It’s just down to the photographer to choose to take the right photograph for that light. Like that old saying about cameras, the best light is the one you have with you. Therefore, getting good photos means matching the available light to the scene.

5. You Were Walking and Hoping for the Best

This trap you can walk into. When you go out with a camera, there are usually three things you want to align: your position, the background, and the action. Sports photographers will wait at a finish line or a hairpin bend for the action to come to them. Wildlife photographers will learn the locations and behaviors of birds and place themselves at the best spot for getting the best shot. Even landscape photographers will plan where to be at what time to get the right angle of the rising sun.

Tying those three things together improves the chances of getting a good shot. Therefore, planning a shot makes an enormous difference to its quality.

However, if you just walk around with a camera, if you find yourself in the right place, it is unlikely to be at the right time for the action to happen. You will walk past the best possible place for a photo and then miss the action that happened there five minutes later. You might have to learn when and where you need to stand, and you have control over that time and place, but you need to wait for that perfect instant to capture the shot.

6. You Chose the Wrong Depth of Field

Subjectively, it is possible to have too shallow a depth of field. A mistake that many make is always shooting wide-open and thus not getting the entire subject in focus. Also, that creamy background blur that so many wildlife photographers seek to create a catalog photo of a bird on a stick has been overdone and it requires much more skill to include background detail that isn’t an accidental distraction. Equally, too much depth can result in the subject not being separated from the background.

Learning what works and what doesn’t for different subjects at given focal lengths, apertures, and subject distances is important to escape this pitfall.

7. You Are a Boring Photographer

Probably the biggest trap to avoid is not using your imagination and being creative. Failing to do that is where photographers often let themselves down. I am sure you see thousands of instantly forgettable photos. However, occasionally, there will be a photo that catches your eye because it is different from the crowd.

Creating those images isn’t an easy thing to do and the trap many fall into is becoming a boring artist or photographer and producing work that is a clone of someone else’s.

How do you avoid this trap? The most creative people allow themselves time to daydream. They are usually independent people and enthusiastic about their art, happily spreading that enthusiasm to others with a kind generosity of spirit. They like to take risks but are thorough in what they do, putting a lot of time and effort into their work. Most importantly, they are open-minded and curious about alternative and progressive ways of doing things instead of being stuck in a one-track approach. If that doesn’t describe you, and you want your photography to stand out from the crowd, then you need to climb out of that trap.

In Conclusion

These are not the only traps you can fall into that will be detrimental to your photography, but they are the most common. There are other traps too, like snatching at the shutter release button, focusing on the wrong place, and using the wrong camera settings. If you are an experienced photographer, perhaps you can think of some too and can help other readers by writing them in the comments. Maybe you have an issue with your photography that you would like help with. It would be great to hear from you too.