Color is fundamental to photography and videography, but the way color is used is not always the same across both mediums. It isn’t uncommon for videographers to make some common mistakes with their color grading, so here are the ones you ought to avoid.
Many photographers have transitioned into video, myself included. This is down to a number of reasons. Firstly, many stills cameras are hybrid, catering for both photo and video. Not only that, but some of the best stills cameras are also highly impressive video cameras too. With that option available to you, you’re going to dip a toe sooner or later. Secondly — and I think this is the bigger reason — the demand for video has rocketed since social media made it the primary way of viewing content. Whether video was doing better than photographs in terms of analytics, so platforms catered for it, or platforms made it possible and the demand grew, either way, video is central to social media.
You may love social media or you may hate and avoid it, if you want to work in the industry, you need to know about it for most genres, and even if you aren’t active on it yourself, you’ll likely have to shoot with social media in mind for clients. So, if you’re making that move over to video, it’s worth learning about the process. A lot of the skills are transferable from photography, but there are some traps you can fall into, one of which is how you color grade your work. In this video, Evan Ranft goes through some of the common mistakes made when color grading videos and these mistakes are typically seen when it’s a photographer transitioning into video.