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Photography Basics

Photography is using the creativity of the human mind and the science of camera

mechanisms to stop time by capturing light in less than a second. You tell stories through your

subject matter and through your compositions. You make art that is pleasing to the eye from your

mastery by knowing how light interacts with objects and how you set your camera to capture the

moment. Your camera uses chemical reactions or digital electronics to capture the light in your

compositions.

The Exposure Triangle

First, we have how the camera

is used to capture light. The exposure

triangle is how the camera renders the

shot. Your shutter speed, aperture, and

ISO (film speed) are in the exposure

triangle. All parts of the exposure

triangle will control the amount of light

that hits the film or the digital sensor.

The shutter speed will control the 1. The Exposure Triangle.

motion blur in the image. If the shutter speed is low and the subject is moving, then the subject

will be blurred. A low shutter speed can be used to show movement in your shot. One technique

to show movement is to have your camera’s shutter speed low and take a photo of a car driving

next to you while you keep the car in the frame. Or you use the blur to make your photos more
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dreamlike. If the shutter speed is high and the subject is moving, then the subject will be frozen

in the shot. You can use this to capture a bird mid-flight frozen in time. Or you can capture a

batter hitting a baseball with their bat. The shutter speed also changes how much light will hit the

film or sensor. The faster the shutter speed, the less light will be able to come through; the slower

the shutter speed, the more light will come through. Next is the aperture which controls your

depth of field. The more open your aperture is the shallower your depth of field will be and more

light will be let in. The more you close your aperture the bigger your depth of field will be and

less light will be let in. Depth of field is the range of area that your photo will be in focus. The

lower the lens’s F-Stop is the more open the lens is. While the higher the lens’s F-Stop is the

more closed up the lens is. With a lower F-Stop, you can separate your subject from the

background more effectively. If you are taking a landscape photo you would stop down your lens

to a higher F-Stop number to bring more of your image into focus. Finally, we have ISO which is

how sensitive the film or camera sensor is to light. A low ISO, like 100, will not be very sensitive

to light but will have less noise/film grain. A high ISO, like 1600, will be very sensitive to light

but will have more noise/film grain. “Aperture controls depth of field, shutter speed can blur or

freeze action, and ISO can add or subtract film grain or digital noise from an image”.

(Vorenkamp, 2022, para.2). You now know the three main ways to control the amount of light

that enters the camera. Now how the light is measured is in Stops. Each Stop is increasing the

light by 2x or decreasing the light by 2x. A F-Stop change of F4.0 from F5.6 is a doubling in

light. ISO 100 to ISO 200 is a doubling of light and is one Stop brighter. A shutter speed of

1/2000 to 1/1000 is one Stop brighter. You now know the very basics of controlling the amount

of light entering the camera and the side effects of camera settings.
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Composition

Composition is the largest part of photography. Photos can

and will come out bland without thinking about the composition.

You want your photos to draw the viewer's eyes to the subject of

your image. First, we have leading lines that direct a viewer’s

attention to a point in the image. These lines can be in the photo

or could just be something straight in the photo. Next is form

which you use three-dimensional objects and lighting to make

2. Cat showing The Rule of Thirds.
shadows and highlights in the image from the subject of the

image. Shape is just like form but uses two-dimensional objects and lighting to make shadows

and highlights in the image. The rule of thirds cuts the frame into thirds with two lines vertically

and two lines horizontally. Making thirds of the frame left to right and top to bottom. If you align

the vertical and/or horizontal lines with your subject, then you are using the rule of thirds. The

photo on the right shows this by placing the eye of the cat at the intersection of two lines. The

Golden Ratio in photography is like using the rule of thirds at the top or bottom intersection of

the vertical and horizontal lines to place the subject of the image. Frame within a frame is using

objects in the shot to frame the subject in the image. You can use windows or doorways to take a

photo using a frame within a frame. Fill the Frame is a technique of having the subject of the

photo fill the frame completely and have as little background as possible. The center dominant

eye is a technique that has the subject’s eye that is the most dominant in the center of the shot.
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Lighting

The second most important part of photography is lighting.

The angle, color temperature, and brightness will change a lot of

aspects of your photo. You have natural lighting, front lighting,

and backlighting. Natural light comes from the sun, and you must

know how the angle will affect your shot. The time of the day also

affects the color temperature of the light coming from the sun, like

the golden hour before sunset. The front light is a light source that

is directly in front of your subject resulting in little to no shadows.

Figure 3. Angled Light on a Door.
Backlight photos have the source of the light behind your subject.

You can get a very good silhouette of the subject but lose almost all the detail in your subject.

Soft Lighting gives you soft shadows and hard lighting gives you high contrast shadows. Color

temperature is how white the light is, and the camera must adjust or be adjusted to white balance

the shot. Color temperature is measured in kelvin from 1,000K to 10,000K. In a digital camera,

you can set the white balance to Daylight (5200K), Shade (7000K), Cloudy (6000K), Tungsten

Light (3200K), White Fluorescent light (4000K), or Custom. In film photography, your film

stock dictates the white balance being Daylight or Tungsten. “If an incorrect white balance

setting is used in a camera, images turn out unnatural, with bad skin tones and color shifts” (John

Bosley, 2020, para.6). You also have to think about the dynamic range of the camera and how it

is different from our eyes. “Dynamic range describes the ratio between the brightest and darkest

parts of an image” (Adobe, n.d.). In an SLR or DSLR, you are looking through the lens with

your eye that has a better dynamic range than the film stock or the digital sensor in the camera.

So, the lighting in the picture can have different brightness in the highlights and shadows.
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Conclusion

In all, you have learned the very basics of photography from controlling the amount of

light that enters the camera through the exposure triangle. You also learned how controlling one

part of the exposure triangle can change how your picture looks with depth of field and motion

blur. You have been shown composition and how it is what gives your photo meaning with how

the viewer will look at it and how they will feel. Finally, you have been shown lighting and how

it also affects your composition.

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References

Bosley, J. (2020, November 7). What is White Balance in photography?. Photography Life.

https://photographylife.com/definition/white-balance

Vorenkamp, T. (2022, January 26). Understanding exposure, part 1: The exposure triangle |

B&H explora. B&H Photo Video.

https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/photography/tips-and-solutions/understanding-

exposure-part-1-the-exposure-triangle

What is dynamic range? | adobe. Adobe. (n.d.).

https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/video/discover/dynamic-range.html