Two Common Mistakes Beginner Photographers Make
I was watching one of many tutorials on YouTube when it hit me: in the beginning, I had so many questions about why my photos didn’t turn out the way I imagined. There were so many things I didn’t understand. In this post, I want to share two common issues I encountered and try to explain them in the simplest way I can.
1. Wrong Exposure
Let’s start with a very obvious one: Why does your photo sometimes turn out too bright or too dark, even when using your camera’s auto mode?
Without diving too deeply into the technical side, here’s a fairly simple explanation:
Your camera, amazing as it is, has its limitations. One of them is how it “sees” and measures light. A camera assumes that the scene you’re photographing reflects light equal to something called “mid grey” (or 18% grey), a tone halfway between pure white and pure black. That’s the default reference it uses when calculating exposure.
The human eye however, is far more advanced. We can see a broader dynamic range (more shades of brightness and darkness) than the camera can. So, in a high-contrast scene (like a bright sky and dark shadows), your camera might expose for the mid tones and misinterpret the scene. The result? Your photo becomes either overexposed (too bright) or underexposed (too dark).
You might ask:
How can I know if the image will turn out too dark or too bright?
It depends on where you focus and how your camera is set to measure the light. The spot you focus on will often serve as the “mid grey” anchor, and everything else will be calculated in relation to that point. However — yes, there’s always a “however” — your metering mode (which tells the camera how to measure light) will also affect your image. Most cameras offer several modes, such as spot, center-weighted, or evaluative metering, and each one gives a slightly different result. I won’t go into all of them here, but I highly recommend experimenting to see how your camera behaves.
2. Strange Color Tones
Another early struggle I had was that the colors in my photos looked wrong. This happened especially in city nightlife photography, where skin tones looked odd, lights looked unnatural, and the overall photo just felt “off.”
Why?
It’s usually due to white balance, or more precisely, color temperature.
Let’s break it down:
Light can be “warm” (more golden or red) or “cool” (more blue). We instinctively react to this in everyday life. A candlelit dinner feels warm and cozy. A cloudy winter morning feels cold and blueish.
In photography, we measure this “temperature” in Kelvin (K). Your camera has white balance settings that let you adjust the Kelvin level either manually or with presets (like “Daylight”, “Tungsten”, “Shade”, etc.). Most modern cameras also have Auto White Balance (AWB), which usually does a good job, but not always — especially in tricky lighting conditions like artificial light or mixed sources (e.g., neon + daylight). So, if your photos look too blue, yellow, or green, don’t worry, try adjusting the white balance setting and see what happens.
Final Thoughts
These are just two of many things that can be confusing when starting out, but they’re good reminders that your gear can only do so much on auto. You, the photographer, bring the magic by understanding how your tools work and experimenting with them.
Happy experimenting — and see you in the next blog! 😊