As the year begins, let’s make sure we’re starting off on the right foot with good photography practices. Now is a great time to identify your bad habits and going forward, make a commitment and a strategy to correct them.
Case in point, as I was searching for a photo the other day I was scolding myself for not keywording my images well enough which prevented me from finding the ones I needed. And to make matters worse, I had to sift thru thousands of photos that should have been deleted long ago.
Check out the list below of some common bad habits… are any of them on your list? I’ll admit I’m guilty of a few myself but I’ve set some firm goals for correcting them this year.
1. Not getting out enough to photograph
- Keep yourself immersed in photography and set your goals for shooting; 2ce a week, every 2 weeks, 1ce a month. Whatever time frame works for your schedule, set it and follow it as best you can.
- Taking classes, joining community groups or meetups can provide a good solution to get you out there regularly and keep you involved in your photography.
- Consider the CPC Photo Community or the Year of Creative Photography course as a way to keep you shooting and motivated.
2. Not taking the steps to learn and practice a new technique
- Define what you want to learn or improve on and decide how you can accomplish it.
3. Sloppy card management;
- Waiting days to download after shooting
- Not taking the time to keyword images – think long term and trust me, you’ll be glad you took the time to do this upon import.
- Not culling images and deleting - same as above, don’t wait, there’s nothing worse than going through old images that are bad. One day when you have all the time in the world, you can go back thru your archive to add keywords and/or delete old pics but for now, commit to be diligent about this going forward.
- Not formatting your memory cards to have them good and clean and ready for new shooting sessions.
4. Not backing up the images to a different device or to the cloud.
- If you lose them you can only say, should have, would have, could have.
5. Not cleaning your gear.
- Wiping down your camera and lens when done and keep that dust from working its way into your camera and onto your sensor. With a lint free cloth, wipe down your camera body and lens. With a lens cloth, wipe down the front element of the lenses and filters.
- Use a hand blower to remove dust from your camera sensor and front and rear lens elements. See this article for more tips on cleaning sensors.
. Not keeping your gear organized.
- After cleaning your gear from a shoot, reorganize and store it so it’s ready for the next shoot. Make everything handy so you can easily grab what you need.
- Have batteries charged, a clean and formatted card in the camera, and your camera bag ready to go.
7. Not removing disposable batteries from devices.
- Store you battery with but not in your flash unit or other device. Avoid finding them corroded and stuck in the battery compartment months later.
8. Not sharing your images.
- Why keep them a secret? Look for photo sharing sites or post on social media.
- If you don’t have a photography website, make this the year you create one and if you do have one, upload new images to it regularly.
With a blank slate before us, this the best time to start. Let’s make 2022 the year that we practice good photography habits!