4 common video blogging mistakes—and how to avoid them

1. Mistake: Your background isn’t doing anything for you. Don’t set up in front of a gray wall. Or a brick wall. Or any kind of blank wall.

Of course you can use white, gray, or black as an advantage. But you need good lighting to do that. Most video bloggers don’t use lighting so I counsel to stay away from this:

This looks better. Hey, who is this guy? Note, I’m not using my laptop camera.

Instead I have a mini DV camera (Canon HV30) perched slightly above me. You’ll see that the walls create interesting angles. The chair to the left breaks up the white wall and that the splash of blue on the other wall helps enormously:

2. Mistake: Your shots have you centered in the frame. Think about negative space. You will look stronger in the frame if you don’t appear bullseye in the center of the frame all the time.

This guy is centered up. You’d get bored after just two minutes of this.

This person is against a black background but he’s lit well so it works.