You Won’t Take Any Good Photos Today: Shifting Your Mindset in Landscape Photography.

You won’t take any good photos today. Got it?

I normally try and take a positive tone in this blog, so this feels like a bit of a harsh way to start something off, but I promise I am going somewhere with this… bear with me.

If you know me, or you have been here before, you will know that my “real” job is working in a school, as Music teacher, who just happens to teach photography as well - the latter is definitely my favourite part of my role! One thing I am always talking to students about is adopting a “growth mindset”. This is about switching the way that we think, so instead of thinking “I’m not good at this”, we say “I can get better at this/I have room to grow/this is how I can better” and instead of “Other people are better than me” we might try thinking “Other people might be ahead now, and I can learn from them”.

So, to start writing this by saying “You won’t take any good photos today”, seems ostensibly negative and completely antithetical, but when we unpack it, it actually starts to take some of the pressure off of us as photographers. And it doesn’t have to be just applied to photography, you could switch this up to anything else that you do!

If we look at it again, saying that “You won’t take any good photos today” is very different to saying “You can’t take any good photos today”. We can all take good photos, we have the knowledge and the skills to do it. We just don’t always do it!

So when we say this, we’re not saying that we can’t do it, we’re saying that we won’t. This is isn’t about being negative, it’s about lowering our own expectations the amount of strong outcomes that we have when we’re getting the images out of the camera, and lets face it, we’ve all been disappointed at some point or other when we’ve been to a location we’ve been excited to get to and got home to find that the shot we wanted wasn’t quite right, the light didn’t help or whatever other reason it is that’s stopped us from being as successful as wanted. This is because, in our heads, we have built everything up so much, that we think we are coming home with a card full of bangers and then we don’t have a single one. It’s gruelling right? If this has never happened to you, please let me know what your secret is and well go into business together!

So what makes a good photo?

I refer you back to my to the opening of this blog: You won’t take any good photos today… If you know the definitive solution to this statement, let me know and we will go into business together and can retire at the start of next month.

This is one of the beautiful things about photography in that, it is so subjective that no one can give you the answer.

You could ask 100 photographers this question and I reckon that all of them would say something different, and they would all say “that’s a really tough question”.

Some people will mention sharpness, some will mention blur, some will mention expsosure and others will mention colour. Most of them will mention story in some form or other. A sharp photo isn’t always a good photo, a blurry photo isn’t always a bad photo, some photos will be way underexposed or over exposed and will still be good photos.

The answer to this isn’t a definitive one. That’s because (in my opinion) there are good photos and there are technically good photos.

By technically good, I mean that they are sharp where they need to be, they are well exposed and they have a balanced composition. Good photos don’t have to be technically good; if you think about intentional camera movement (ICM) then there isn’t much in this style of photography that is sharp: that’s the whole point of it!

If I’m taking pack shots, then there isn’t a story, they’re photos of objects which are intended to be honest. They need to be technically good so that they show the object/item off at it’s best and in a way which shows it for what it is; the client isn’t after creativity, they want the brief fulfilling and they want clear shots. These shots are technically good, but at the same time, they’re not going to win any awards. Such is the need for technical accuracy, that AI is starting to get involved with this in a big way.

So what makes a good image? For me, it’s one that makes you think, makes you stop and makes you ask questions. Not everyone will like all of your image, art is subjective and it’s divisive. One of the most expensive photos ever sold at auction (Andreas Gursky’s Rhein II) is one such photograph. It’s one of a series of photographs of the River Rhein, which flows through the centre of the frame with grass one either bank, an overcast sky and a path in the foreground. Everything runs horizontally. I think what I like about it is that you can view it top to bottom (like layers in cake), or from front to back link you are standing and looking at the scene. To some people, this will be a boring photo, but for me it’s not just a good photo, it’s a great photo… someone thought it was great to the tune of around $2.7million, but there are some people who won’t think it’s worth more than a tenner!

Your Camera

Better camera’s don’t take better photos. Read that again… Better camera’s don’t take better photos.

They might make higher resolution images in a way that makes the process easier, may be more intuitive and will make your life easier in post processing. If you’re a wildlife photographer, the better autofocus systems might give you more in focus shots. But they won’t help you to take ‘good’ images and they won’t make you a better photographer.

Think about some of the great photographers of the last 100 years. Ansell Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Ernst Haas, Elliot Erwitt - the list could (and probably should) go on and one. But none of them used digital cameras. They didn’t have the autofocus systems that we have today, they probably didn’t have light meters in their cameras, they didn’t have the technology in their lenses that we have in the modern world but they still took great photographs.

When I got my first DSLR and took it out for the firs time, at night, in London I was set to come back with 100’s of photos that were going to blow people’s minds.

I did not.

I even thought that there was something wrong with the camera. There wasn’t, but there was a problem behind the camera, in someone who thought that the camera was going to do all of the heavy lifting. I had to spend time learning the theory and the technqiues and had to invest in a tripod. I even had to the read the camera manual… assisted by some demonstrations on YouTube.

But, telling myself that I might not take any good images made it even sweeter the first time came back and downloaded my card to find some images that I was pleased with and wanted to share with people.

Photography companies are great at making new cameras and they are just as good at marketing and making you think that you need the latest pieces of kit. You should only upgrade your kit when you’re need to, not just because the manufacturers told you that you should.

A few years ago, teaching photography I had a student with a Canon 5D Mark IV and a student with an entry level Canon, it was something like a 4000D. Guess who was taking the better photos… I’ll give you a clue; it wasn’t the person with the expensive camera.

Remember, the most important thing in photgraphy isn’t what taking the photos, it’s who’s taking the photos and the bit of electrified meat between their ears that is telling them how to take it.

So Why Aren’t You Going to Take Any Good Photos?

I mean, this a bit of a harsh question, you are going to take good photos, but if you can adjust your mindset and think that you’re not going to, you avoid the disappointment of having nothing you’re proud of, but you also have the joy of coming back to the edit and seeing that you have got more than you expected.

If you go out all the time thinking that you’re going to have endless good, usable photos on your memory card only to find that you don’t, you’re going to begin to fall out of love of with photography pretty quickly.

Even people who do landscape photography full time will go out and not come back with an image that they are happy with. They might have some technically excellent images, but nothing that they feel is ‘good’.

Remember

Photography is art, and as I have said, art is subjective.

Not everyone is going to like your photos, and that’s ok. Not all of your shots are going to be good, and that’s ok too. You won’t get banger after banger every time you go out to shoot, sometimes you will come back with a whole card of photos that you don’t like or you don’t think are any good, and guess what? That’s ok!

Thanks for reading, I hope you found this useful/insightful! If you’d like to be the first hear about new blogs and reviews and to keep up to date with what I am doing and see my latest work, please consider signing up to my newsletter.

If you’d like to support the blog and help me keep producing Lake District photography content, honest gear reviews and regular website updates, you can do so via my Buy Me a Coffee page. Keeping everything running smoothly takes time, and your support makes a real difference. Thank you.

What Are The Best Camera Settings for Landscape Photography?

This is a question I get asked a lot, and I mean A LOT. Not just about landscape photography, but about all sorts of different photography - what are the best settings for portraits/ICM/product/wildlife… the list goes on.

The bad news for some people is that there is no ‘best’ settings for any of these types of photography. The best settings for the photo that you are taking are the ones that you need to be able to take the photo you want to take.

Let me unpack this a little…

For some situations, there are preferred settings. In a landscape shot, I am going to want use the sharpest part of my lens, and for the lenses that I have, that’s usually somewhere around the f/8 mark.

This is going, to some extent, dictate the rest of my settings as I am making the aperture smaller; other things are going to need to change in order to compensate. If you’re new to photography, then reading my blog about the exposure triangle, is going to help you to really understand what I am talking about in this entry.

Once I have set my aperture, I have a number of things I want to consider… do I want to freeze motion or do I want motion blur? Do I need to inject a ton of ISO into the image to get my desired exposure length? Does the ISO value I choose mean that I am going to be adding a load of noise/grain into my image that is going to ruin it?

Even though I want to use the f/8 aperture, this might not be possible and I may need to make some compromises.

It may even mean that to get my desired level of sharpness across the whole image, I need to consider focus stacking.

There’s a lot going on in just this one scenario.

Thinking again about the original question, “what are the best settings for landscape photography?”, we then need to remember that as landscape photographers, everything we do is at the mercy of that staple of British conversation, the weather. As a landscape photographer in The Lake District, I know only too well the perils of the changeable Lake District weather and understand that at certain times in the year, it isn’t uncommon to experience all four seasons in one day! However, the most common thing you are going to come across is changing light, no matter where you are.

Sometimes the light will be bright, you’ve got your camera settings dialled in and made your image. You want to take another couple of images at the same location, or of the same subject, but the light has changed, the clouds have positioned themselves firmly in front of the sun and everything that you have just done correctly to nail the first exposure, now needs to change. This is normal and for me, it’s one of the challenges that makes this pursuit so much fun!

But I’m Not a Landscape Photographer!

To be quite frank, this doesn’t matter. What I have just said can apply to all manner of photography genres, particularly those where you have little-to-no control over what the light is doing, because you are shooting outside and are at the mercy of Mother Nature.

To give another example…

I used to live in London and was used to shooting in low light - night photography was a real staple for me, as were shots of “bus trails” and light trails. For a time, I was obsessed with taking cityscape images, with long exposure times to get either light trails or capture the motion blur of a bus that was driving through my scene.

After much experimentation, I figured out that for me, on my camera with my lenses, the optimum exposure time for a perfectly (in my opinion!) blurry bus was around 0.3 seconds. Notice that I said “around” in the last sentence? This is because it wasn’t always 0.3 seconds, there are a lot variables at play, not least the speed of the bus that was driving through your scene. If it was going too fast for my settings I wouldn’t get what I wanted. If it was going to slowly for my settings, it wouldn’t make it out of my scene and I would end up with something that I didn’t want.

What about portraits?

Surely for portraits, what you need is a fast lens and then just to shoot everything at f/1.8 also that you get good bokeh? Not in my experience.

Bokeh is great, we all love the way it looks, be that light orbs in the background of our images, or a blurry background that makes your subject ‘pop’ and creates some separation from background.

The issue is the focus plane. I try to imagine the focus plane of my image as an invisible entity that stretches from the front to the back of my scene. The higher my f number, the deeper the depth of field and the more of the image will be in focus.

But when it comes to shooting portraits, you want to be sure that all of your subject is in focus. I have found in my experience, the shallower the depth of field, the less of my subject is in focus and by the time I have looked beyond the focus of someone’s nose, I am starting to see a fall off in sharpness and by the time I have moved along that invisible plain to their ears, I am really not seeing as much sharpness as I should.

In the portrait scenario, your settings are not only going to be dictated to you by the amount of light that you have available, but also by your distance from your subject, and further more, your subject’s distance from the background. You might need to adjust your settings, your positioning and your subject’s positioning to make sure you are getting the level of focus you want and the correct exposure that you need.

If you’re doing headshots in a controlled lighting environment, against a backdrop and you can have your subjects stood on a mark, then this is going to be a little bit easier to figure out and to maintain your settings.

But if, for example, you are trying to tell a story in your images, then you are going to want completely different settings. Let’s say for example you are taking a series of portraits of people that tell us about the job they do and you are taking a portrait of a fisherman who works on a boat. You’re shooting on location at a harbour and his boat is moored up.

In this setting, you could set your aperture to f/1.2 and have a really buttery-smooth, bokeh’d background. Or… you could stop down your aperture ring to give you more of the background in focus so that you can see the harbour and the boat behind the fishermen. All of a sudden you have gone from a photograph of man who looks and dresses a bit like a fisherman, to a man who is a fisherman, with his workplace and working environment behind him to really sell the concept and to help to tell the story. Context, sometimes, is everything.

How About In The Studio?

Again, it’s a similar story here, but you do have much more control. This is because in a studio, you have full control over the lights - if you have a decent set of lights/strobes/flashes etc then you can control the brightness/intensity of the light, how soft or hard the light is (with the use of modifiers), how long it lasts for, where it is coming from and its distance from your subject, the way the light is diffused, the colour of the light… the list could go on.

What this means is that you could set your camera up and change the lighting settings or you could adjust your camera to the lighting scenario depending on what it is you are going for, but generally, if you’re changing one setting, you are going to need change something else.

In the studio, there is not a single set of perfect settings, the settings you need are going to be dependent on the look you are going for, what you are shooting (shape, size, etc) and how you need to present the final images to the client.

We are however, always looking for an image that is sharp, so our aperture is likely to be the overriding factor in our decision making here.

There are preferred settings…

… but there are no best settings!

Your preferred settings are the ones that you prefer. It doesn’t mean that they are the best ones - they might not be someone else’s. Think of it like this: If there were a set of best settings for every scenario, someone would have written the book, we’d all have a copy and we’d all be shooting the same images in the same way.

We’d also all be reading the book and thinking to ourselves “well they’re not the best settings for that situation, because what about that photo of x that I took at y”.

There’d be umpteen YouTube videos on the topic of “why I disagree with the best settings manual and what I do instead”. You see my point? These are personal, artistic choices/decisions based on an infinite number of possible scenarios with an infinite number of desired outcomes.

As you have probably gathered by now, there isn’t one single set of best settings for each of the situations you are looking to shoot. The best settings are dictated by where you are, the time of the day, the weather, the kit that you are shooting with and what your final intentions are.

Some of this is also going to be dictated by personal taste, especially when it comes to the creative aspects of your own work (if you’re doing client work then a big part of the creativity is going to be dictated to you, but remember that you’ve been hired for the way that you shoot, so your creativity still plays a role).

The best way to ensure that you can get the correct settings for your intended outcome is to practice, learn your camera and what it can do, what it is capable of and how to make it do what you want it to and how to programme the settings effectively. Spend some time learning about lighting, experiment and always have a project on the go so that you’re actively creating.

Thanks for reading, I hope you found this useful/insightful! If you’d like to be the first hear about new blogs and reviews and to keep up to date with what I am doing and see my latest work, please consider spending a few moments signing up to my newsletter.

If you’d like to support the blog and help me keep producing Lake District photography content, honest gear reviews and regular website updates, you can do so via my Buy Me a Coffee page. Keeping everything running smoothly takes time, and your support makes a real difference. Thank you.

Affordable Landscape Photography Accessories

Landscape photography can be an expensive way to spend your time, but is there a way you can do it cheaply without being “cheap”. But what items are there out there that will give you the best experience whilst ensuring you can still get great results and being confident that your kit is going to survive?

In this blog I am going to look at some of the items that are staples of many landscape photography setup and find you some back-pocket-friendly kit that won’t break the bank, or your camera.

This blog contains Amazon affiliate links. If you mae a purchase after clicking one of these links, I may receive a small commission at not cost to you. This is a great way to support the blog and allows me to continue writing posts like this, I really appreciate every purchase you make.

Getting into photography can be expensive, and that expense can be magnified if it’s something you don’t end up pursuing as much as you thought you would. No one wants hundreds, if not thousands of pounds worth of gear just sitting in cupboard, unused and gathering dust.

When you’re starting out in Landscape Photography, the amount of stuff you ‘need’ to buy can be overwhelming and some of the prices are absolutely eye watering. There are tripods that run into thousands of pounds, filters that cost hundreds and other accessories that you don’t even know if you need or not. I am going to try and demystify some of that, starting now!

Tripod

Do you need it? Yes.

This is probably one of two things on this list that I would say is an absolute must, the other being the camera bag. Most of the other stuff you can get by without, but I can’t think of many applications, other than perhaps street photography, where owning a decent tripod is worth its weight in gold. Maybe not so much if you’re run and gun street photography.

Like I said before, these can run into thousands, but that’s not what this blog about.

I’m going with K&F concept for this choice. Until I went down the road of the more expensive Benro Mach 3, this is what I used for everything. They’re strong and steady enough for most applications, are lightweight and this one comes with a ball head, so you’re not going to have the expense of shelling out for that too!

K&F Concept Tripod

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L-Bracket

Do You Need It? If you have a tripod, you will wish you had one of these!

This is one of the best photography purchases I ever made. An L-bracket is a piece of machined metal which attached to the bottom of your camera and fits ‘inside’ the ball head of your tripod and allows the two things to attached to each. Because of its shape, it allows you to switch between portrait and landscape orientations quickly without having to rely on the your ball head. It seems a bit of an odd thing to have/want given that one of the major functions of the ball head is to switch your camera’s position, but trust me when I say that having an L-bracket makes this process much more straightforward and when you need to switch quickly, you'll be really grateful you have one. You can pick one up for less than a tenner, but they do run into three figures. I paid £9 for mine 4 or 5 years ago and it’s still going strong.

Some options are designed for specific cameras and because they are made in much smaller numbers, the price is much higher, the universal ones tend to be much cheaper. Just make sure that you get something hat is compatible with your own camera. I’ve linked a really affordable universal one below for your so you can start exploring some options.

L Bracket

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Filters

Do you need them? Not necessarily, but they’re really useful!

This is going to depend on the types of shots you are aiming for, when you shoot and what kind of look you want to achieve in your photos. If you want to do long exposures when there is a lot of light, then you’re probably going to need some ND filters. If you’re shooting buildings with lots of glass, cars or bodies of water, then you’re probably going to want a polariser. Then there’s UV filters, colour filters, star filters and mist filters, as well as a bunch of others that I can’t/haven’t remembered.

Filters can also be crazy expensive and you get what you pay for, but as a starting point take a look at the range that K&F Concept offer.

K&F Concept Filters

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K&F Concept do a wide range of filters, but the ones in orange boxes are an affordable entry point, usually around £20, but this is going to depend on the size of your filter thread - look on the barrel of your lens or check your camera’s manual.

Strap/Cuff

Do you need it? Probably!

Your camera probably came supplied with one, and if you’re happy with it, stick with it. Some people like to change because they want something more comfortable around their neck. Some people prefer a cuff/hand grip instead of a neck strap because it suits their style of photography better and some people just want something a little less ‘obvious’ - it’s not always a great idea to have the make and model of your camera hanging round your next.

There are tons of options available, but some of them are borderline prohibitively expensive. The one I am suggesting for you is from PGY Tech and looks seriously like the Peak Design Slide Light and has a similar quick release system. Camera straps are a really personal choice, you might prefer a woven one, a leather or one that’s more rope like. Get something comfortable and something you trust!

PGY Tech Camera Strap

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Camera Bag

Do you need it? Yes.

You’re gear is the only gear you have, and you want to be able to move it around be that in the landscape, off to a location shoot, or just in the car to an event. You have spent good, hard earned money on investing in your new kit and you need to make sure it is safe and looked after.

Camera bags are essential, but also a minefield. If you search Amazon you will find page upon page of results, if you visit the major photography retailers you will find at least ten different brands, none of them especially cheap. The last time I visited a major camera retailer, I piked up a bag that caught my eye to have a look at and as soon as I saw the £400 price tag, it went straight on the shelf.

Depending on your kit (how much of it you have and how big it is), you might want to consider bags from well known manufacturers like LowePro,Think Tank and Peak Design, but expect to pay big(ger) money for these.

Like straps, these are a really personal choice, and unfortunately if you decide to stick with photography then this won’t be the last one you buy - none of them ever are. I have been doing this for years now and I still switch between a couple of bags depending on what I am doing. That said, when I first started, I was using the Lowepro Tahoe 150 for everything, and at £60 this is a really good option for the beginner photographer, it holds plenty, is comfortable, unobtrusive and isn’t a massive bag.

I’m also recommending the one I have linked on the card below, the Tarion 15L Waterproof backpack. I like the back opening on this one as well as the side access, which is great for when you need camera quicker than you thought you would! Oh, and it’s only £38!

Tarion 15L Waterproof Camera Bag

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RGB Light

Do you need it? It depends.

This is something that I have in my bag 90% of the time. When I was living in London and mostly shooting in low light, it was there 100% of the time and I’d have two of them. Landscape photography in the Lake District tends to call for their use a lot less, but I like to have options to light any macro opportunities a little more creatively if the light is a bit flat, or simply if there isn’t enough of it!

There are hundreds of these available on Amazon and they are not all made equal! I have a couple of Smallrig P96L (catchy, I know) RGB lights. They are small and light with decent colour accuracy, and best of all can be picked up for less than £40

Smallrig P96L RGB Light

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Remote Shutter Release

Do You Need It? Yes… If you’re shooting on a tripod.

This is something that I think is essential if you’re shooting on a tripod. The whole point of stabilising your camera is to limit or negate the amount of movement that you are introducing into your camera and lens. If you press the shutter button by hand, no matter how careful you are, you’re going to introduce movement, and if you’re shooting at longer focal lengths then you’re really going to notice it. Yes, there is an argument for using your camera’s self timer function, but there are some situations where you don’t want to rely on something happening in 2 or 10 seconds time. Sometimes you want full control over the moment of capture, and that’s where your remote shutter release comes in.

Be careful when you’re buying this - they’re more often than not brand specific, and in some cases even model specific so be sure to find one that works with your model and brand and camera.

Believe it or not (there’s a theme emerging here), there is a wide range of these on the market, some are really simple and some are more complicated and have extra features like interval timers and bracketing.

I’ve gone for something wireless, which pushes the price up a bit, but it’s always nice to have something without a cable that has the potential to move your camera. And again, don’t forget to check that you’re ordering something which is compatible with your camera!

Aodelan Remote Shutter Release

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In Conclusion…

Landscape photography is often associated with expensive cameras and specialist equipment, but the reality is that many of the tools that make the biggest difference are surprisingly affordable. Simple accessories such as a sturdy tripod, a polarising filter, or a remote shutter release can dramatically improve image quality and open up new creative possibilities.

What matters most is not having the most expensive gear, but having the right accessories that help you work more effectively in the landscape. A tripod allows you to shoot long exposures and keep your images sharp. Filters help control light and enhance colours. Small items such as spare batteries, memory cards, and a headlamp can make the difference between capturing a great shot and missing it entirely.

Many photographers gradually build their kit over time, adding accessories as they discover what they need most. Starting with a few well-chosen, budget-friendly items allows you to improve your photography without making a huge investment.

If you’re just getting started with landscape photography, these affordable accessories are some of the most useful additions you can make to your camera bag. They will help you shoot in more conditions, experiment with different techniques, and ultimately get more enjoyment from being out in the landscape with your camera.

Landscape photography is about patience, light, and being in the right place at the right time. The accessories listed in this guide simply help make that process easier, so you can focus on what really matters: capturing the beauty of the landscape.

If you found this guide helpful and you enjoy learning more about landscape photography, consider joining my mailing list. I occasionally send out emails with photography tips, new blog posts, gear recommendations, and updates from my latest shoots in the Lake District. It’s a simple way to stay connected and make sure you don’t miss future guides designed to help you improve your photography.

If you’d like to support the work that goes into creating these guides, you can also buy me a coffee. It helps cover the time and effort involved in writing articles, testing gear, and maintaining the website. Your support genuinely makes a difference and helps me keep producing free photography content for the community.

Landscape Photography Workshops in The Lake District

There is something different about learning landscape photography in the place that inspires it the most. For me, that’s the Lake District and I’m lucky enough to live in amongst the stunning surroundings that it offers.

But the Lake District isn’t just a beautiful backdrop and a gorgeous place to live, but it’s living, shifting environment. Light moves quickly and it is often fleeting - it’s gone just as soon as it has arrived. The cloud and contrast change by the minute and knowing how to respond is what separates a snapshot from a portfolio image.

That’s exactly what a well-run landscape photography workshop will help you to develop.

Why Choose a Landscape Photography Workshop?

You can learn settings from YouTube and you can read about composition in a book, but actually being in the landscape with someone guiding you and talking about the decisions available to you in real time… that’s something very different.

A workshop allows you to:

• Understand light direction and timing in real conditions

• Refine composition beyond the obvious viewpoint

• Learn how to work with weather rather than fight it

• Improve confidence using filters, tripods, and exposure techniques

• Develop a more consistent editing workflow

Most importantly, you learn how to see — not just how to shoot.

This variety makes it an exceptional classroom. You can practise:

• Long exposure techniques on moving water

• Foreground interest and depth

• Working in high-contrast mountain light

• Minimalist compositions in mist

• Seasonal colour control in autumn and winter

Every session is different because the landscape is never the same twice.

Click for Landscape Photography Workshops

What You Should Expect From a Professional Workshop

A good landscape photography workshop is not a “follow me and copy this shot” experience.

It should include:

Location Planning

Understanding why a location works at a particular time of day. Learning how to plan using light direction, season, and weather forecasts.

In-Field Technical Coaching

• Aperture, shutter speed, and ISO in context

• Histogram use

• Exposure bracketing

• Focus stacking

• Filter selection (ND and polariser)

Composition Development

Going beyond central framing and obvious angles. You’ll explore layering, leading lines, negative space, and visual balance.

Post-Processing Guidance

Capturing strong files is only part of the process. Editing is where you refine mood, contrast, and colour.

Whether you use Lightroom, Photoshop, or both, understanding why you edit — not just which sliders to move — is crucial.

Who Are Landscape Photography Workshops For?

They’re often assumed to be for beginners, but that’s not really the case.

Workshops can benefit:

• Complete beginners who want structure and clarity

• Enthusiasts stuck in a creative plateau

• Photographers transitioning to manual mode

• Professionals looking to refine their landscape portfolio

• Travellers wanting meaningful photography experiences

The key isn’t your level — it’s your willingness to learn and experiment.

Small Group vs One-to-One Workshops

Both formats have strengths.

Small Group Workshops

• Shared learning

• Broader discussion

• Social experience

• Cost-effective

One-to-One Workshops

• Tailored tuition

• Flexible locations

• Personalised feedback

• Faster technical progression

Choosing the right format depends on how you learn best.

What You’ll Really Take Away

Beyond sharper images and better compositions, most photographers leave with:

• Greater confidence in difficult lighting

• A clearer creative direction

• Improved understanding of workflow

• The ability to plan shoots independently

You move from reacting to conditions to anticipating them.

And that changes everything.

Why I Run Landscape Photography Workshops

I moved to Cumbria because landscape photography became more than just a hobby. It became how I see the world.

Spending hours exploring fells before sunrise or waiting for light to break through cloud teaches patience, observation, and decision-making.

Workshops allow me to share not just camera settings, but process:

• How I plan shoots

• How I adapt when conditions change

• How I build a consistent editing style

• How I approach landscape photography commercially

If you’re serious about improving your photography in the Lake District, a structured workshop accelerates your growth far more effectively than trial and error alone.

Final Thoughts

Landscape photography isn’t about chasing iconic viewpoints.

It’s about understanding light, timing, and intention.

A workshop won’t just give you better images from a single day — it will give you the skills to create stronger photographs long after the session ends.

If you’d like to explore the Lake District with guidance, structure, and practical field experience then get in touch. You can learn more about my Lake District Landscape Photography workshops here.

Thanks for reading - this has been a quick one today, but I hope you have found it useful. If you want more stuff like this as well all of the updates then sign up to my newsletter by clicking here.

If you’d like to support the blog and help me keep producing Lake District photography content, honest gear reviews and regular website updates, you can do so via my Buy Me a Coffee page. Keeping everything running smoothly takes time, and your support makes a real difference. Thank you.

5 Beginner Lake District Landscape Photography Locations You Can Reach Without a Long Hike

Welcome back! I am going to keep this one as short as possible, but at the same time try to give you enough information in a short space of time so that you can get out and shoot.

What follows is a list of 5 places you can take incredible landscape photos in The Lake District, without having a massive hike to get there. These will be great if you’re short on time, or if you’re short on energy but still want to get out. Nothing in here has more than a 20 minute to reach a great spot and get some great photos in the bag.

Gummer’s How

This one is the one with longest and most demanding walk, which is saying something as this one is an easy trek, which should take no longer than 20 minutes from the car, has a bit of climbing but is rewarded with incredible views across Windermere and many of the Lake District fells.

There’s a free car park just off Fell Foot Brow, which is run by Forestry England. You can find it at ///rated.soup.looms on What Three Words.

From here, cross the road and follow the signs which will lead you along a short trail with a slight incline, and then you’ll be met by a short, but much steeper climb up to the top of the hill.

Walk towards Windermere (you will be able to see it) and you will be rewarded with some breath taking views. This is a great place for sunset and you’ll get some incredible shots if the weather is in your favour. I prefer a long lens here as it lets you pick some of the detail in the scene.

Don’t forget your head torch for the way back if you’re planning on staying late.

If you’re planning for sunset, then check out my sunrise and sunset photography in the Lake District blog.

Queen Adelaide’s Hill

This is another one which is a short walk from the car and rewards you with great views across Windermere, without the walk up Gummer’s How. There’s even a bench at the top if you’re feeling a little out of breath. This is another good one for sunset. You can park at at Rayrigg Meadow Car Park (What Three Words: ///magpie.permanent.agent).

The path to Queen Adelaides Hill is largely paved, but there is a small section which is through a bit of woodland that can be uneven underfoot and isn’t paved so make sure you have the right footwear on.

Arrive in plenty time if you’re going for sunset, as this car park allows motorhomes overnight and it fills up quickly. It’s also not cheap and is run by the council so there’s no discount/free parking with your National Trust Card.

Head towards ///waiters.risky.loudness and you will be in position for some great views.

Surprise View

We’re heading out of the Southern Lake District and up to Borrowdale for this one. You’ll find Surpise View at What3Words ///copying.shadowed.bounding , with parking really close by. I would estimate the walk from the car to the viewpoint to be around 30 seconds… This is the shortest ‘walk’ on the list! You have incredible views of Derwent Water and down into Keswick from up here, and it’s great for sunset shoots, and also looks great at Blue Hour.

Whilst you are here, you can also bag a Lake District classic and bag yourself a shot of the packhorse bridge at Ashnesss, What3Words ///pills.index.remarried. This is a great place to go and do some long exposure work! Check out my long exposure blog by clicking here.

Wastwater

Moving out into the Western Lake District now, and we’re headed to Wast Water. I am not going to include a what3words location for this one, because there are so many great places to shoot from here. You’ll end up on the north eastern shore of the lake (the opposite shore is inaccessible unless you fancy a swim across England’s deepest lake) when you arrived and there is lots of parking at the side of the road (stay out of the passing places and park respectfully, please!). Once you’re parked, you can walk along the side of the lake and scope out some of the compositions that are spread out in front of you. Explore and have fun. This is another one that is great at sunset.

Blea Tarn

This one takes a little more central and comes with a weather warning. If the weather is poor, don’t go - check before your travel. In the winter, the roads leading up here become treacherous and are impassable in bad weather. You have been warned!

That said, in the summer, whilst you need to be careful on the roads, many of which are single track, your patience (and careful driving) will be rewarded with an easy walk up shot at Blea Tarn.

You can park at the National Trust Car Park (free for members!) which you will find at What3Words ///destroyer.marked.groomed . Leave the car park via the entrance you got in through, cross the road and follow the path. From here, the tarn is on your right and you can walk down to it. Make sure you watch where you put your feet and take good shoes - it can be very boggy. There are great shots across towards the Langdale Pikes and you will see some interesting wildlife here if that’s your bag as well.

This one is a good sunrise spot, get here early to secure the best spots.

Bonus Hidden Gem

This one is often overlooked and is little known. It is called Kelly Hall Tarn, which is in a village called Torver on the way into Consiston. There is parking at What3Words ///backdrop.shelters.quitter. Once parked, take a walk towards the back of the car park and follow the path which will lead you to the Tarn. It’s about a five minute walk, which can be boggy after rain and also boggy when it hasn’t rained for days. Be prepared. This is a great sunset spot, and is super dark at night for you astro fans!

And that concludes the blog! If you try any of these locations, let me know how you get on. I’m always interested to hear where people head first, and what conditions they find when they get there. Keep an eye on the blog for more beginner-friendly Lake District photography guides.

These guides are all written from time spent out in the Lakes with a camera in hand. If you’ve found it useful, buying me a coffee is a great way to support the site. You can also join my newsletter for future guides, photography tips, and new content as it’s published.

Check out some more of my latest blog posts below…

The Problem with Social Media and Photography.

Photography has never been more accessible — or more distracting. We’ve never shared so many images, yet spent so much time consuming other people’s.

Welcome to another blog post, can you believe it’s already Sunday evening again? Where on earth do the weekends get to?

Anyway…

I came up with this blog idea when I was writing my 10 Photobooks YOU Should Own Blog and I was typing about “On Photography” by Susan Sontag, a book in which she talks about the way in which we consume photography and how it could mean that we become desensitised to things such as the artrocities of war, how we could end up with a distorted view of the world around us. She explores the idea of control we have as photographers and also looks at how we can end up becoming people who consume life through photography instead of actually living our lives.

Strap in, I feel like this could end up becoming more of an essay than a blog entry, but we will see how we get on. I’m not even sure how long this one is going to take me to write (it’s currently 1 minute to midnight the night before the Amazon Black Friday Sale goes live and I am hoping to grab some bargain last minute Christmas gifts (EDIT: it’s now gone midnight and I was successful!), I have just finished and scheduled the photo books blog and I am trying to be productive instead of just sitting here scrolling. .

All of the things Sontag said resonated with me, especially that final point about consuming life through photographs (I’m going to include video in this as well). I think more so because I had myself just been consuming a couple of videos on YouTube about a couple of people who had brought “Brick” devices for their phones to limit the amount they are using them and to enable to break out of the cycle of doom scrolling.

This is a big bit of inspiration for this blog, alongside what I have read in Sontag’s book, coupled with some of my own experiences and those that have been shared with me by friends.

Social media is everywhere now, it has been for some time. It’s everywhere a lot of the time, because we take it with us. It’s on our phones, it’s in our pockets, it’s right in the palm of your hand, or at least within arms reach. And I’m not just talking about the obvious things such as Facebook, Instagram and X et al. I’m thinking about things like WhatsApp and Telegram, Discord and LinkedIn. I didn’t know until a few months ago when I was doing a digital marketing course that LinkedIn pre dated all of the things that I have just mentioned!

(Case in point… I finished writing the previous paragraph 15 minutes ago and that fifteen minutes has been lost because something popped up on my phone and I got stuck scrolling!)

The Internet Used to be a Place Where You Went.

When the internet first started to take off in the 90’s, it was clear it was going to be a big thing and that it was going to be important and was going to permeate every aspect of our lives. But back then, things were very different. Computers were huge, had massive CRT monitors, sat on big console style desks and took up a lot of room in the house.

At this point in time, mobile phones were similar… they were huge and didn’t do much other than make phone calls and there certainly wasn’t any internet on them.

But back to my original point about computers.They were so big that they didn’t move easily and the chances are that it was the only internet connected device in the house. It would be parked in a corner of a room, often a lounge, sometimes an office or a dining room. This meant that you had to move yourself to go the computer to access the internet… This meant that the internet was a place that you went.

There was almost a certain kind of ceremony to it - you’d log on and then have to connect to the internet through the phone line using your dial-up modem and if it connected first time then you had the world at your fingertips and a lot of what you could access was pretty basic! As Bo Burnham put it in “Welcome to The Internet”, it was a place of “catalogs, travel blogs, a chat room or two”. And as he goes on to say in the same song, these day’s it’s “a little bit of everything, all of the time”, and that can be quite distracting, especially as photographers when we are naturally predisposed to enjoy anything that is visual.

Now We Take The Internet Everywhere With Us.

And I mean everywhere. I think most people take their phone to the bathroom with them. Long gone are the days of reading the backs of the bottles of shampoo or a discarded copy of Take-a-Break. Now, we have the entire internet at our mercy, and social media is a huge part of the internet as we know it today. Facebook alone has over 3.07 billion active users. There are 8 billion people in the world so that’ almost 40% of the population, and that means there is an absolute ton of information being uploaded to it.

Then there’s YouTube. At the time of writing, you would need approximately 18,000 uninterrupted years (yes years) to watch all of the videos that exist on YouTube (you’d better have a premium account to ensure that you’re not wasting any of your 18,000 years watching adverts! (It was originally 17,000 year when I looked 3 weeks ago: the amount of content uploaded there is huge!)

And then there’s Instagram - the app that loves us to share our photos videos in the (often) vain hope that we will get our images seen by people other than our closest family and friends.

Oh, and TikTok… this can end up being a thief of life if you let it.

And let’s not forget X (formerly Twitter).

Now depending on the way you use social media and what you are looking/watching, how you consume it and what you’re into really affects this point that I am making:

I watch a lot of photography videos on YouTube (Nigel Danson, Thomas Heaton, Henry Turner, Peter McKinnon, James Popsys etc), I also watch a lot of popular science type content and I love watching ‘Kinging It’ doing up their “Scottage”! My other vice on here is fishing videos (something else I dabble in, but am not very good at). The first and last things in this are going to help me to make this point…

I love learning, I love getting better and I love cosuming this content and hearing the stories. But whilst I am watching YouTube and looking at other people doing it, I am not out there actually doing two of the things that I love. Sure, it’s great watching others and learning from them, but you can’t learn properly yourself without making your own mistakes. I work as a music teacher in “real life”, and I know that not one of my students would get better at playing the piano just by watching me and hearing how I corrected the mistakes. They need to make their own mistakes to be able to learn how to overcome them, and the same is true for us as photographers.

I have my own strategies for managing this; I tend to watch most of my YouTube when I am working in the studio (I am watching Henry Turner as I write this), it’s usually just on in the background and I will fully engage if something piques my interest.

I am on my phone too much, I know I am, mainly on Instagram for my sins. I upload my own content and consume that of others, but it still comes down to the same point; if I’m scrolling, I’m not shooting. If I’m not shooting, I’m not learning and if I’m not learning, I am most certainly not getting any better.

Making Comparisons

We all do this, we look at other people’s work and we compare our own work to theirs. This is great if you’re doing competitor analysis, but it can be harmful to your progress and growth, especially if you’re finding that people aren’t engaging with what you think is the best photograph you have ever taken!

Then, we fall into the trap of seeing an image we like and then going out and trying to take the same image. It’s probably one we have seen elsewhere before and this serves as a bit of a memory jog for us. When we stop scrolling and go out to take our own image, we don’t think it’s as good or we didn’t enjoy the experience, or when we got there, everyone else was there trying to take the same shot that they have also seen on Instagram and now yours is just going to get lost in amongst all of the others. Now, it’s overdone and no one is bothered any more. Social media is full of a lot of noise.

If you get stuck in a scrolling-cycle, you are becoming one of those people who is consuming life through photos and not enjoying life by living it. Be the person who people want to copy, get that original shot, find the new angle on an old favourite, but you aren’t going to do that sat on your bottom, in your lounge trying to get to the bottom of Instagram/YouTube/Facebook/etc/etc/etc.

So What Can You Do About It?

This is going to feel a little bit like a PSHE lesson, so prepare yourself…

Ultimately, this will be down to you and how you think you can manage it. I’ve already mentioned that I try to limit my YouTube consumption to times when I am working on stuff like this blog or when I am editing photos. I must admit though, I do still enjoy a bit of YouTube whilst I am eating!

Scrolling is a bit more of an issue for me, especially when I am sat in front of the TV. I have made it a bit of a mission for the new year to try and scroll less and to be more present, and it’s going to take a lot of discipline and/or will-power, but if it gets too much I might try one of those Brick devices that I mentioned at the start of this blog. All of these things will, if I do them, help me to be a little more present, and it might even help my sleep as I won’t be saturated with blue light before I try and get my head down.

Remember, social media isn’t always real. In fact, I would say that it’s largely not true to life, and this is even truer with the advent of AI and the bubble that is continuing to grow. I know I have been using some AI images in this blog, but I think these ones are particularly obvious, (although they do look a little bit like me). I do it because it’s easy and I can get exactly what I need, relatively quickly. There are some very good AI images and videos that have been made by people far better at it than I am, which are really convincing (maybe not the Coca-Cola Christmas advert though!), and you need to be on it if you want to spot them.

To add to this ‘lack of reality’ (or maybe it’s a lack of truth), people only tend to share the good stuff or the exciting stuff. You don’t see the less exciting stuff, you don’t see the events that have happened that are dull or maybe to private to warrant sharing online. Don’t be sucked into thinking that someone has a perfect life - they don’t. No one does. I think people are getting better at sharing more of the less perfect things, but there’s a long way to go with this.

Instagram has moved on a great deal since the days of people uploading pictures of their dinner and it’s not just about photos anymore, in fact, it’s probably less about photos at the present moment and is very much a video-first platform, because that’s what people are more likely to engage with. The sad reality is that if you want to grow and get yourself out there on most platforms these days, you need to be creating and sharing videos.

Get out there, live your life and don’t live yours through someone else’s experiences. You’ll thank yourself for it later.

Final Thoughts

Social media isn’t the enemy. It never really has been. It’s a tool, and like any tool, it’s all about how you use it. Used well, it can inspire you, connect you with like-minded people and help you learn. Used badly, it can quietly eat away at your time, your confidence and your motivation to actually go out and make photographs.

As photographers, we’re naturally drawn to visuals. That’s what makes social media so compelling for us, but it’s also what makes it so dangerous. It’s very easy to convince yourself that scrolling counts as learning, or that watching other people do the thing is the same as doing it yourself. It isn’t. You don’t get better at photography by consuming more photography. You get better by going out, making mistakes, missing shots and occasionally getting something right.

Try to be mindful of how and why you’re using these platforms. Notice when they’re helping and when they’re just filling time. And if you catch yourself stuck in that endless scroll, remember this: every minute spent watching someone else make photographs is a minute you could have spent making your own.

Get out there. Be present. Live the moments you want to photograph, don’t just consume them through a screen. Your photography — and probably your headspace — will be better for it.

If you’d like to support the blog and help me keep producing Lake District photography content, honest gear reviews and regular website updates, you can do so via my Buy Me a Coffee page. Keeping everything running smoothly takes time, and your support makes a real difference. Thank you.

How to Overcome a Creative Rut in Photography: Tips and Strategies for Every Photographer

We’ve all been there. We don’t have any ideas, we don’t have the want to get up and go out to shoot and find every excuse under the sun not to go out (there’s no light, it’s raining, *insert your own here*) and sometimes, you’re just not “feeling it”. So what do you do when you’re feeling this? How could you get yourself out of it? How do you recover that lost will to go and shoot? In this blog, I’ll go through some of the things that I have done when I’ve struggled to pick up the camera.

Thankfully, this hasn’t happened to me in a long time. I’ve always loved photography since the first time I really started to do it seriously about 6 years ago, but there have been times when I just couldn’t be bothered, or simply wasn’t feeling like I wanted to. Let’s not also forget that most of us are doing this as a hobby and simply don’t always have bags and bags of disposable time to go out and shoot! Sometimes, it can be just a struggle to know what to do and where to do it.

I’ve been fortunate enough not to have ever felt like giving it up, but but under this intro, you’ll find some of the strategies I have used to get me off the couch to get out to shoot.

These tips/ideas aren’t exclusive to landscape photography, let alone landscape photography in The Lake District (which is what I talk about a lot on here), they will will work for everyone who owns a camera. You don’t need to go out and by things to help you with any of it, most photographers will have the things I talk about in this blog already. In fact in one part of this entry, I’m going to tell you not to buy gear to help with this problem!

Anyway, enough waffle. Let’s jump in…

This blog contains Amazon affiliate links and I may receive a small kickback if you make a qualifying purchase after clicking one of my links. The images in this blog are from unsplash.com and credits are at the bottom of the page.

1: Build a Shot List

I like this one because it’s free (most of us already own a pen/pencil and a piece of paper), it’s easy and it encourages you to look at other photographer’s work, or to actually go out and explore (when I am shoot planning, it tends to be a mixture of both). Doing the latter means that just in the planning stage, you are likely to go and scout the location and take the camera with you.

Come up with a list of locations and some ideas of photos that you would like to get, find some spare time in your day/week, and then head out and start to tick them off!

As with another point further down this blog, don’t plan exactly what shots you want to get - if you end up not

getting the shot(s) it makes the whole exercise feel like a bust and this could put you deeper into the rut that we are trying to escape here.

My final point about any list is that it allows you to see your progress, ticking things off as you go can help you feel a real sense of accomplishment.

2: Look at Photography Books

I have a not inconsiderable collection of photography books from a wide variety of photographers and in all manner of styles. Look at the greats and check out some newer more contemporary photographers. It’s worth looking in magazines as well. As a landscape photographer, I get Outdoor Photography Magazine every month. Other magazines are available so find which one is the one for you and try it out.

Photobooks are a bit of a double edged sword. They’re great ways to find things you want to do and maybe to find a new technique you want to try but on the other hand, they are also a great way to limit your creativity to a certain extent.

The problem is that we often see photos that other people have taken and think “I want to go and shoot that”, and you come home and you’ve got a great picture that another, unknown number of photographers have got too and can mean that in some ways, your image lacks originality. There’s nothing wrong with shooting ‘honeypot photos’, they’re great ones to have in the bag and will generally do well on social media, but they’re just not original. Look around when you’re out and find something new: be the one who’s copied, not the one who copies.

If you’re looking to improve your composition, then there are some great resources online, or take a look at The Photographer’s Eye by Michael Freeman, it’s a great resource and can give you some great ideas that you can apply to the different scenes that you plan to shoot and perhaps even some new ideas for a favourite location.

3: Challenge Yourself (a post a day/a shot a day)

There might be some days that you don’t post, and that’s ok. Just post two shots the next day, but don’t take the Mickey with missed posts - not posting for a whole month and then posting 30 photos on one day to make up for it isn’t really in the spirit of the challenge!

If you’re someone who is into social media then challenging yourself to a post a day is something you can try in order to get you out shooting. If you’re going to post every day, then you don’t need to go and shoot everyday that isn’t possible (or sustainable!) for many people, but if you like a challenge then this is something that with a little bit of effort, will ensure that you are out shooting to build up enough content to have something to post every day for a whole year.

You could try to do a shot every day, a nice (but massively expensive) way to do this could be with a Polaroid, but have you seen the price of I-type film lately? Trying to do this with colour I-type film would set you back somewhere in the order of £700!! If you don’t have money to burn then this isn’t the way to do it.

However, if you did want to shoot every day for a year, just one shot, then this can be doable, with some caveats, and gets you into the habit of taking your camera with you every day and if you need to shoot locally (see point 4 for some tips on this), then this can be a great way to start building up a fairly cohesive body of work.

4: Shoot in Your Local Area

I can already hear the cries of “but where I live is boring” or “there nothing to photograph where I live”. It isn’t and there is. You just haven’t found it yet, because you haven’t tried doing this. There is a ton of YouTube videos on this subject (usually called something like “Photographing a Boring Town”).

This can be a great way to find the interest and the beauty in the everyday. When you go out and start looking, you will start to notice the details and the compositions will start to present themselves to you.

If you have a massive camera, it can feel a bit intrusive and a bit like everyone is looking at you. Two things will help here: 1) The more you do it, the less weird it’s going to feel and 2) stick a smaller lens on the front of your camera. My 80D is a bit of a unit, but if I stick something like a 50mm, 35mm or even my pocket dispo (read my review here) on the front of it, you will reduce the size of your camera and it won’t draw as much attention to what you’re doing.

5: Come up with a Personal Project

This ties in neatly with the point above. With something like this, anything is possible, but start small. The hardest part of this can be figuring out what it is you want to do. It could be anything from documenting family life, taking photos at football matches you attend (I’m off to see the mighty Barrow AFC play in league two later and will be taking it with me), shooting around town and building your street photography skills to a still life project in the studio.

This is only going to cost you time, and it might uncover a hidden passion and could even encourage

you to step out of your comfort zone and try a style of photography that is new to you. The image for this section uses intentional camera movement (ICM), and is a fun and free way to develop a new skill and maybe find a new artistic passion in your photography.

I know it’s a bit cliché, but the possibilties for this are endlesss.

Some ideas to get you started could be:

• Changing Seasons (longer term project)

• Empty Streets (good for low light fans)

• Everyday Objects Reimagined (Find interest and/or beauty in the everyday)

6: Take your Camera Everywhere

I mean literally everywhere. Going to the shops? Take your camera. Walking the dog? Take your camera. Driving long distance? Take your camera. Going to a museum? Take your… you get the idea.

I recently ‘found’/remebered I had a very small, very old digital camera that was given to me by a relative when she was clearing some stuff out. I am going to be taking this everywhere with me for a month to see what I can come up with and how it affects what I do. The point here though isn’t about buying new gear, it’s not about having the best gear, it’s about having your camera with you. The time when your camera isn’t with is the only time it’s useless.

It’s also likely to be the time when the best light and the best opportunities present themself to you. It will stop those “I wish I had my camera with me/if only I had my camera with me” moments and grabbing an absolute banger of a photo when you wouldn’t have normally had your camera with you can be inspiration enough in itself.

7: Plan a Trip with Photography in Mind

Pick somewhere you want to shoot. Plan a trip there. Get out and shoot. I had written this first sentence just as some placeholder text as I was planning this blog, and as reminder to me what I wanted to write when I got round to fleshing this out. Now I am looking at it, I kind of feel like it doesn’t need anything else adding to it!

Find a new location, research it, consider what shots you want to get and then go out and get them. I think with this though, and the mindset that the this blog aims to address, it’s really important not to plan your shots in too much detail. I say this because whilst it is good to have something in mind, if you don’t tick them off your list, or you don’t get the light you wanted/needed then you could well come away from a shoot like this feeling like you have failed, and that’s not what we’re trying to do here.

And yes, I know the image in for this entry is the view from a plane window, but this doesn’t need to be a huge trip - you could combine this with a local area project, or a longer trip that you can turn into a day out, you don’t need to get on a plane!

8: Try Something New

This one feels like it is fairly obvious.

This could be a new style of photography, a new technique or you might even decide to branch out and shoot some video if you haven’t done much of that before.

As long as it’s something new for you, it doesn't matter what you do, but have an idea and then go and try it.

Some things that you could try:

• Long Exposure

• Astrophotography

• Intentional Camera Movement (ICM)

• Taking out just one lens and sticking to that focal length. (If you only have a zoom, pick a focal length and be honest with yourself!)

9: Revisit a Favourite Spot

This is another point which I think really speaks for itself, but for the avoidance of doubt, here’s what I mean…

We all have spots that we love. These are the places that we return time, after time, after time. Sometimes we know why we go back, sometimes we don’t know what it is that draws us there, and that’s the beauty of it. I have a few places that are my go -to’s, and one of my all time favourite shots comes from one of these spots. Yet I keep going back.

I think part of it is because it looks so different at different times of the year, and the sunsets across the fells are often very colourful and seem to last forever!

It might be that your favourite spot is a real honeypot location for a particular shot and you’ve not managed to nail it yet - go back and have another go; you never know, this could be the time that you get the perfect light and everything comes together to give you the shot that you’ve been hoping for.

I think that well over 99% of the shots we take are truly once in a lifetime, so make sure you’re there to capture it.

10: Don’t Buy Gear

For me, this is one of the most important ones. You should only by gear when you need it, not because you think it will make you go out and shoot. I’ve done this before, so learn from my mistake. I didn’t learn the first time. Or the second.

It didn’t cost me a ton of money, but that’s beside the point. Every time I did this, I ended up with a shiny new desk ornament for the first few weeks as when these items arrived, they just sat unused for longer than they should do and I just ended up taking them out the next time I thought I might need them. I didn’t. These weren’t things I needed, they were things I wanted and probably because I thought they would solve my lack of motivation, and that just wasn’t the case.

Save the money and when you do need to upgrade something, you’ll already have a chunk of it there. Or save the money and use it to visit somewhere new, this is far more inspiring than having a new toy to (not) play with.

Feeling stuck happens to every photographer, but the key is to keep moving forward. If you found this guide helpful, don’t forget to save it for later and explore more of my blogs for fresh inspiration. And if you’d like regular tips, insights, and behind-the-scenes updates straight to your inbox, sign up to my mailing list. It’s the best way to stay inspired and never miss new content.

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What’s wrong with my photo?

A beginner's guide to reviewing your images after your shoot and diagnosing what’s not quite right in the bad ones!

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So you’ve got your camera and you’ve chosen a lens, you’ve read my blog about the exposure triangle and you have taken some of the information from 10 Things I Wish I Knew as a Beginner Photographer, you’ve been out on your first shoot and now you’ve had a look at the images in your editing suite of choice.

You’ve managed to secure a few shots that you’re really happy with and you’ve got a few others that have got issues, they might be blurry or noisy or out of focus. You know there’s something that you should have done differently, but you’re not sure what changes you need to make.

We’re looking at some technical stuff in this one, some of which will be specific to your camera so you might want your camera and its instruction manual to hand when you’re reading this. An open YouTube tab might be handy as well.

This blog is going to aim to show you some common mistakes, what they look like and what you can do to stop it from happening again!

Blurry Images.

This image was taken at night, outside my old flat in London and it’s blurry. Really blurry.

There are different kinds of blur in photography, but the two we see most of in camera are motion blur (where the subject is moving) and camera movement (where the camera has moved as you take the shot).

This image hits the jackpot as it has both! The tree is blowing in the breeze and the camera has moved as I have taken the shot.

So what’s caused this?

There’s a couple of issues here, both related to the amount of light available. It’s a night shot, so lots of light needs to hit the sensor to properly expose the shot. To let enough light into the camera means the shutter needed to be open longer. In the case of this image, the exposure length was 0.5seconds which isn’t massively long, but certainly long enough to cause the issues that we can see.

This image was also taken hand held, i.e. not on a tripod and without a shutter release cable. When I pressed the shutter, the camera moved and in the 0.5 seconds the shutter was open, I also moved and as a result the camera moved even more. It was also a windy night, so in the same 0.5 seconds, the wind has blown the tree and this has been recorded as blur by the camera’s sensor.

As a general rule of thumb, if your shutter speed is longer than the focal length you are using, your camera should be on a tripod. So for example, if you are shooting at 50mm and to correctly expose the shot you need a shutter speed of (for example) 1/10 then you should be on a tripod.

There’s other things you could do as well that could be useful if you don’t have a tripod. You could try increasing the ISO - this would make your sensor more sensitive to the light, so you could reduce the shutter speed, but remember his could introduce noise to the image.

You could also try increasing the size of your aperture but remember, this could impact the sharpness of the image (lenses are usually sharpest towards the middle of their aperture size) and will have an impact on the depth of field of your image. This shot was taken at 50mm with a shutter speed of 1/50th of a second and an ISO of 100 - I could have increased the the ISO but it would have introduced too much noise into the image so the tripod would have been the best way to go here.

By contrast, the skyline shot above was a 30 second exposure, 15 times longer than the night image of the tree and the house, and the whole thing is pin sharp. It was shot at f/8 with an ISO of 100 at 70mm so the above rule regarding focal length and shutter speed comes into play here; this would have been impossible without a tripod!

Underexposed and Over Exposed Images.

The image on the left is one that we would use the phrase “blown out” to describe the sky. The shutter has been open for too long.

This means that when this image was taken, the shutter was open for so long that enough light hit the sensor to “overload” the photosites that it’s made from.

This means that effectively, no data has been stored in them, there is no detail there and the image shows a patch of complete white. No amount of editing is going to sort this out unless you replace the sky in Photoshop.

By contrast, the image on the right is under exposed, so the opposite is true. The shutter wasn’t open for long enough to let sufficient light into the camera to hit the sensor and so the photosites on this image are black, but this presents the same problem - there is no data present in those parts of the image.

Fortunately, the solution to under and over exposed images is simple and doesn’t require any extra kit to solve it (unless of course you are needing such a long exposure that you need to crack out the tripod). It pays to get this right in camera!

An over exposed image needs a shorter exposure time and an underexposed image needs a longer exposure time.

You should always check your exposure using the light meter which is built into your camera making sure it’s as close to the centre as possible.

You can also turn on the zebra stripes/similar in your camera. Check the manual to see how to do this, but the premise is simple, if you have over/underexposed areas of your image, the LCD screen will flash to show where the problem areas are. This a great way to see these areas at a glance and its really helpful when you’re starting out if you don’t know how to read your histogram or aren’t confident with the light meter.

But what about images that high dynamic range, and what is high dynamic range?

Images that have high dynamic range have really bright elements and really dark elements in them. You can often find these sorts of scenes at sunrise and sunset whilst the sun is rising/setting and parts of the scene are falling into darkness or haven’t been lit up in the morning light yet.

There is a way around this, and it’s called exposure bracketing. To do this, you need to take a correctly exposed image, an under exposed image and an over exposed image (you’re going to be exposing for the highlights, shadows and “midtones” in the respective images). Most cameras have this function built into them, and it will be called Automatic Exposure Bracketing (AEB) and you should consult your manual to see how to do this with the model of camera that you have. Once you’ve got this set up, you can capture the images and then blend them in either photoshop or Lightroom to get yourself an image that is perfectly exposed! In most models, if you change the shooting mode to “burst” it will take all three images without you having to touch the camera and risk introducing any movement into the image.

Spots

More precisely, sensor spots! I have highlighted some of the ones in the image to the left although they’re already quite small and the size of this image isn’t helping, but they’re there! If you look closely, you will find even more.

These aren’t uncommon, especially if you’re changing lenses a lot and if you’re not changing them in a way that can help to prevent it.

The good thing is that they are easy to deal with using the clone stamp and/or spot removal tool in photoshop and/or the clone tool in Lightroom, depending on what you prefer. Both programmes will provide good results.

Whilst these are easy to get rid of, if there is a lot of them in your image then they can be time consuming and you always find more when you start to look for them. You might also find that they appear in some images and not in others, even though they were taken seconds apart. This is because the focal length you are using and the aperture size you are using can impact how many, if any at all, appear in your image.

These tiny, yet terribly irritating blemishes are caused by tiny dust particles settling on your camera’s image sensor and are easy to prevent and minimise if you do a couple of things . Firstly, never leave your camera without either a lens or or a body cap over the mount. This prevents the sensor being exposed to the open air and dust.

Secondly, whenever you are changing the lens on your camera try to have it pointed with the lens mount facing the floor. Dust tends to fall down and not up, so by doing this, you minimise the risk that you are exposing your sensor to. The more you change lenses, the easier this task will become as you build up some muscle memory.

You should also make sure that you keep your sensor clean. You can do this, or your can pay someone to do it for you. It’s not a difficult process, but it is a very delicate one and you’ll need a steady hand. If you’re not confident in your own ability to do this then most good, local camera shops will have a sensor cleaning service. You can buy packs of sensor cleaning swabs on Amazon and they are fairly cheap. I have linked the ones that I like to use here. You’ll pick a whole pack of these up for less than half the price of a sensor cleaning service in a shop but be warned that if you cause any damage to the sensor, you have set yourself up for a pricey repair and in extreme cases, you could completely write off your camera.

Always consult the manual for your camera and the manufacturers instructions for cleaning your sensor prior to having a go at doing it for your self.

Soft Images

Or, in the case of the image to the right, soft subjects.

When we talk about soft images, what we are talking about is an image which is out of focus. Or at least the subject of the image is out of focus or “soft”.

In the image of Chaffinch on the right is out of focus, or at least the subject is. What we have is an image where the camera has focussed on the wrong part of the image, you will see that the grass and debris in the back ground is much sharper!

The grass in the foreground is also out of focus, but in a shot like this (were the subject in focus!), could actually be desirable and help to draw the eye to the subject, but as we don't have the focus in the correct place, this is a moot point.

This image is unusable and unrecoverable. Were this the only shot of this bird I had, it may have been disappointing but fortunately, I managed to get one that was in focus!

Thankfully, again, this isn’t a difficult one to sort out, but the way in which you go about it is something which is going to be partially dependent on your camera brand and you’ll need to consult the manual, or YouTube to get the right settings.

You will need to familiarise yourself with the different autofocus modes in your camera, and make sure that you have the focussing indicators turned on so that you can see, through your viewfinder, or LCD screen exactly where the camera is focussing. This will help you in most cases to ensure that you are nailing the focus on the subject.

The autofocus in many newer cameras is powerful enough to detect the subject, recognise what type of subject it is and focus on it, if you have an older camera, you won’t have this luxury so you’re going to need to practice.

The image above was also shot at an aperture of f/4, which means that the depth of field is quite shallow, stopping down to f/8 might have help to save this image and given a deeper depth of field with more of it in focus, but this would have also mean slowing down the shutter to a speed which isn’t practical for shooting faster moving subjects.

If you’re shooting fast moving subjects like birds or sports, then you also might want to explore back button focus as this can make your life a bit easier - again, the way in which your camera is able to do this is going to depend on the make and model so consult the manual and consider watching some model specific videos on YouTube which will show you how to do this.

It can be slightly different in landscape photography and still life photography, or indeed any other genre where your subject is moving very slowly, or not moving at all, as you are likely to be using manual focus. The rubber duck above was shot in a studio using manual focus and a smaller aperture to give a greater depth of field.

Manual focus gives you complete control over where you focus and how you focus, within the limitations of your equipment and settings. When you have focussed your image, use the functions on your lCD to zoom in and check that you are completely pin sharp! You could also turn on focus peaking if your camera supports it as this will give you a further visual signal as to if/when your subject is in focus.

With any discussion about focus, we should remember that lenses have limitations. They have a minimum focus distance (how far away a subject should be before the lens is physically able to focus on it) so you’ll need to be in the right place to get the subject to be “focusable”. You’ll find this information printed on the lens you are using. You can also use the tools in PhotoPills to help you calculate hyper-focal distances. This can be quite complicated, so work on the basics first and then about going down this rabbit hole!

Grainy/Noisy Images

Sometimes, when you get your photos into Lightroom, you will be able to see that they have a kind of texture to them, almost like they have been printed on sandpaper.

What we’re dealing with here is digital noise, which is introduced into images when the ISO setting is cranked up, this amplifies something called “photon shot noise”in your image which leads to the grainy feel that you can see in the grass in the image on the right hand side.

This is one of the easiest things in this list to sort out, you just need to know your camera and be familiar with how well it deals with high iso. For example, on my Canon 80D, I know that I can get the ISO up to around 6400 before the grain starts to become an issue, but this varies from camera to camera, there is no hard and fast rule. You will need to do some experimenting to find out where the red line for you is and how much grain you are willing to accept in your images.

Remember that if you reduce your ISO, you will need to adjust shutter speed and/or aperture to compensate for this. If you are working at higher ISO’s then you really need to nail the exposure in the camera, as if you try increasing the exposure too much in Lightroom you’re really going to exacerbate any noise in your image and could end up with something that is unusable.

The other way that you can deal with some noise is in post production. The latest version of Lightroom has a noise reduction function built into it and this is pretty good at removing noise, but the trade off is that you can end up with images that look a but un-natural if you use it too much or if there was a tremendous amount of noise in the image to begin with. Other tools which can do this are available, but you need to be aware of the same issue and you should check the cost of these bits of software too!

To wrap up, understanding and avoiding common photography pitfalls is all part of the journey to improving your craft. With a bit of practice and attention to detail, these issues become easier to spot—and even easier to fix. As with most things, it comes with practice, and sometimes a lot of patience.

If you’ve found this guide helpful or have any questions about your own photography challenges, I’d love to hear from you! Feel free to drop me an email, or connect with me on Instagram and Facebook for more tips, inspiration, and behind-the-scenes content. Happy shooting!