Outdoor Photography How To

Professional photographers spend years studying, practicing, and refining their shooting and editing techniques before really hitting their stride, and this video from an accomplished pro is intended to shorten your learning curve by revealing five "huge mistakes" made by self-taught shooters.

Once you understand this handful of errors and the solutions required, your outdoor photography skills are sure to grow by leaps and bounds. Steve Arnold is an Australian pro whose goal is to "help landscape photographers level-up their in-camera and post-processing techniques to create their best imagery ever."

As he says, "in this video I'll explain five mistakes that cause landscape images to be dull, boring, and amateurish." He then demonstrates solutions to each scenario that will dramatically increase your odds of success. And he does so in barely nine minutes.

Arnold begins with a "massive" mistake that can hold you back and even destroy the credibility of your work. He puts it like this: "There's a small Goldilocks Zone between under- and over-processing photos." In short, if adjustments fall outside this zone of awesome editing you can expect your photos to be wreaked.

According to Arnold, the trick is understanding how far you can go during the editing process, and when it's time to stop. His examples prove the importance of a thoughtful and oftentimes subtle approach to making enhancements that imbue images with a look that's compelling, realistic, and believable.

Arnold's discussion begins with "external" factors that need to be satisfied for optimum results. These include time of day, the ambient light available, any glare or reflections on the screen, and the color of light that illuminates the room where you process your work.

In other words, if you finish your edit in a dark room it will appear bright, colorful, and vibrant. But look again in the morning with sun streaming through a window and the same image may look dull and flat as though it needs more work..

Then there are "internal" factors that must be considered if you really want to get things right. Arnold says these "happen in your head because the human brain doesn't perceive things the same way all the time." This phenomenon occurs because we tend to become desensitized by consistent stimuli over time.

The remainder of this nine-minute lesson is devoted to helping you overcome these external and internal obstacles so that the only thing that's consistent is the quality of your work. There's more great stuff on Arnold's instructional YouTube channel, so set aside time to explore.

And for some high-level insight on upping your skills further, be sure to watch the tutorial we featured with a successful National Geographic photographer who demonstrates the magic of backlighting for spectacular nature and wildlife photography—and even environmental portraits that stand out from the crowd.