also guilty of making when I first started and if somebody hadn't told me

about them I wouldn't have corrected them as fast as I did so this is what

I'm doing for you now these are very simple things to fix and they make all

the difference for your pictures mistake number one is keeping a level horizon

now I'm an advocate for always doing things in camera if you can so when

you're out shooting keep in mind that general principle is horizon should be

straight I see this all the time on Facebook and on Instagram for my family

and friends that take beautiful sunsets on the beach and their horizon is wonky

and it just ruins the pictures so if you've already taken the picture and you

want to fix it in post just go in your editing software of choice I use

Lightroom and click on your crop tool and just twist the image so that their

horizon is level you can also click the horizon leveling tool and click and drag

on the line of the horizon and it will straighten the image automatically for

you while we're on the subject of straightening lines the second biggest

mistake I see people making is when they're taking pictures of buildings and

architectural photography and older building lines are not parallel to each

other so basically this happens when you're taking a picture unless you keep

your camera looking straight at the horizon the perspective will be off so

basically if you tilt your camera up all the lines of the buildings will be going

upwards or if you tilt your camera down all the lines will be going downwards

it's easy to fix in camera if you have the wide enough lens if you keep your

camera straight with the horizon then all the lines should be straight but if

the composition you wanna shoot doesn't fit within your frame there are some

lenses called tilt shift lenses that basically move the optics of the lens

upward and it allows you to fit a lot more things in no no no everybody can

afford a specialized lens to shoot architecture I don't even have one so

the best way to fix is and the way I do it is in Lightroom in post-production I

basically shoot so that I have everything within my frame and I go in

the develop module and scroll down all the way to transform

and click that auto button and if that doesn't fix a perspective you can also

try the fool and if that still doesn't fix a perspective then you can try the

guided tool where you can click and drag lines on the lines of the buildings and

on the line of the horizon and that will straighten up everything

the third biggest mistake I see photographers make involves portrait

photography and that is when you shooting people and you basically cut

off their limbs or the toes or their fingers or the top of their head I'm

sure you can create some really unique compositions if you want to and that's

your intention but my general rule is to either keep everything in frame or if

you really want to cut off a limb cut strategically the general rule is either

cut at the middle of a limb so at the middle of the shin or at the middle of

the thigh at the middle of the forearm or just above or below the joints I

almost never cut off the top of people's head unless I want to go for a really

close-up portrait and it's really simple to fix with the crop tool in Lightroom

if you've made the mistake of chopping off fingers you can just copy a bit

closer in and that will just make a picture look way better than before the

fourth tip also involves portraiture and it's when people expose for the

background rather than the face this is a really easy mistake to actually make

because the camera metering will usually grab the largest area and meter for that

rather than the tiny little face that you might have in your shot there's a

couple of ways of fixing this in camera and number one is using a flash that

will make the exposure of the face match the exposure of the background however I

don't like to use this a lot of times because the flash light is quite harsh

especially if it's an onboard camera flash and so I like to use the second

method which is basically using a reflector to reflect the light back onto

the models face and that makes a much nicer and smoother light source than a

flash if you don't have a flash or a reflector this is really easy to fix in

post however you need to be mindful when you're taking the pictures to have a

nice average exposure so that your highlights aren't blown and your shadows

aren't crushed so when you bring it into Lightroom you have room to play with it

and the way I do it is I crop in the face quite closely and I check my

histogram I increase the exposure so that the face is properly exposed and

usually when you do this the background will be blown out complete

so then what I do is I grab a circular graduation filter and I click over the

face to preserve the faces exposure and I bring down the exposure for the

background and this usually works out really well to balance everything out

and the fifth big mistake I see beginner photographers make is not editing their

pictures or editing their pictures way too much there's a lot of purist

photographers out there who think that if you touch up their pictures and it's

cheating and if it's not straight out of the camera then it's not real

photography or whatever but what these people don't realize is that if you're

shooting in RAW and you should be shooting in roll basically your image

sensor flattens out your image and makes it a bit greater than what is actually

reality and that is to give you more dynamic range for you to play with when

you're editing in your post processing software however if you are shooting

JPEG there are color profiles that you can attach to the image which basically

baked the Edit in so it will bake in the contrast and the saturation and the

sharpness and the clarity and I don't know about you guys but I don't want to

do that I want to have full control of my image on the flip side of that

there's people who when they're starting out go way overboard with the Edit drag

the clarity slider up and the saturation slider up and the sharpness and I'm

definitely to this day guilty of this so what I like to do is I like to do my

edit and then pull back 10 to 15% on all the sliders or just come back the next

day and have a look with fresh eyes that I haven't gone too far with the Edit so

those are my 5 tips I hope you enjoyed them if you liked this video give me a

like and consider subscribing for weekly videos and hey go out and make some

pictures