They say your Photography Mistakes open up two paths one goes toward success and the other goes toward failure. The first path is of learning from the mistakes you did and never do them again. The second path is to ignore those mistakes and keep doing the thing that mostly satisfies your EGO or what satisfies society.
I bet you that even if you are going to choose the second path there comes a time that the bubble will burst and you will be introduced to reality. I am so sure about this because this happened to me. I had chosen the second path and I saw myself ending my own career as a Photographer before even it has begun.
In this article, I am going to share:
5 Photography Mistakes Every Beginner Should Avoid
#5 Comparing Myself and My work
Comparison is the evilest of all it can ruin your mental and physical health. For me, Instagram was the gateway to compare my journey with other Photographers.
Imagine a guy who started running and spent 5 years running continuously, Know you enter the race and you see this guy running and you started comparing yourself with him. Look how far he has reached, look at his running style, look how smoothly he runs. Ask yourself are you doing justice to yourself?
If the answer is No then you must not compare yourself with some other guy who has completely different goals, mindset, and energy than yours. Your energy depends upon your own hunger for eating success.
#4 Upgrading my camera can improve my Photos
Writing this reminds me of a story where once a renowned painter was invited by a renowned chef to a house party. Everyone was enjoying themselves and the chef suddenly ask the painter about his paintings, He said “Your paintings are really great, You must be using an expensive canvas and colors” The painter was a wise man. He smiled at the chef and while eating the cake replied “This cake is really delicious you must be using an expensive oven”.
Doesn’t matter what type of oven you are using if the preparation is not right the cake is not going to be tasty, Same goes with every piece of art. Photographers can learn to operate cameras very soon but it takes a lifetime to learn how to see from the camera.
Do not think of upgrading your gear unless you feel like the camera is not capable of creating the image you can visualize in your mind.
#3 Working For Free For Friends and Family
If your friends and family is contributing in paying your bills you can work for free for them as long as you wish to. But the scenario is not the same every time. I have been a bad guesser in renting my time without any exchange of values or currency.
The rule that I made for myself is I will only work for free if I am getting any value in return. Family always comes first so you can always add an extra family and friends discount. But don’t work for free if you know your worth.
#2 Listening to the bad advice
I was the guy who used to listen to every piece of advice without a filter. It doesn’t matter who it is coming from and many times I have gone against my will to work on those devices and it always hit me back.
Naval Ravi Kant wrote in his book “No one is adult we all are trying to figure it out” If you are listening to people who haven’t achieved what you are working for then you are also not going to achieve it anyways.
So what is the solution you ask? Well, I only listen to myself now even if I am stuck and the advice to myself fails It goes into the list of things not to do. But this usually does not happen because when I am my own boss I try my best that my advice works for me.
#1 Not Started Social Media Early
At the time of writing this article, we are a family of more than 150k on Instagram. We are trying to build a community of Photographers that help each other. I was always the stubborn guy who always used to post pictures on my IG. But Instagram has changed and so is the world.
Everyone has found their own ways of learning and teaching. When the majority of the audience shifted to REELS I decided to stick to the photo format and to this bad advice my IG account was stuck to just 40k followers.
But not long before 3 months, I started posting some serious content on Social media, and now here we are at 150k+. More people know me now more brands are reaching out to me I am getting more new clients.
Social media is a free marketing tool but it takes your time and effort.
Thoughts
I told you about my mistakes and we always tend to see what we can learn from our mistakes but the important part is we skip what is working. If we are writing things not to do we must write down what is working and double the speed of it. So find your own way out of your clutter, experiment, and see what is working for you. As I said earlier, Every human is unique.
