hues don'ts + dos.
Photography:
Make sure you are prepared!
Don’t forget things you need. I once walked 2 miles into the woods and set up my equipment to shoot a family portrait. I didn’t have a single camera card… had to pack up and leave. Not a good look!
Do pack extra batteries, camera cards and lens cleaners. You never know when you’ll need them.
Check your camera settings.
Don’t be afraid to test your skills. Stop shooting on auto and push yourself to learn settings in new environments. The first time I shot a concert, I shot on auto… and not a single image turned out. Fail.
Do some test shots before your shoot, if your time allows. It leaves extra time to tweak settings.
On the day of the photoshoot:
Don’t cancel on your photoshoots last minute. If you need to cancel, give plenty of notice. 30 minutes before does not count. I was asked to be a model and on my way to the shoot, I reached out to check in and was told the shoot was canceled. A notice would have been a nice touch.
Do show appreciation to your clients. Get them hyped up about themselves before, during and after the shoot.
Photography competition!
Don’t compare your work to others; it is a recipe for disaster. Get in your own groove and believe in yourself. It’s taken me a long time to learn this and I still have to practice not looking down on my work.
Do draw inspiration from other photographers you think are great!
When things go bad…
Don’t panic your face off and tighten your shoulders. I recently had a live stream fail…hard.. and I was full-on panicking. It was out of my control and the stress was not solution-based for anyone involved.
Do drop those shoulders, learn to breathe, and troubleshoot. If it’s out of your control, work with what you do have going.
Graphic + Web Design:
Don’ts
Don’t create logos as jpegs. They won’t scale big or small without getting blurry.
Don’t use more than 3 fonts. It gets way too busy
Don’t hide your content. Carousel headers are not useful, they hide important content behind other important content.
Don’t upload giant photo files. Make sure to resize your photos for web. Large photos take too long to load and people don’t usually wait.
Don’t be so sterile. Show your personality in your work. Corporate feels cold. We wanted to have connections with real humans.
Dos
Do use color to create a mood. Saturation can be used to make artwork happy and fun, while desaturated can make artwork have a cold and lonely tone.
Do check your spelling more than once. And even get extra eyeballs on it. There is nothing more embarrassing than a misspelling on your email that was just sent out.
Do check your websites for errors often. Sometimes pages just decide to go down. You want to be the first to find it.
Do keep your forms short. Gather what you need and get out. No one wants to fill out full page forms.
Do cut down your content. Who is reading all that? Get your point across quickly because people love to skim.