Perspectives in Photography

Susan Brannon

26 July 2011

 Photography Tips for Composition


Photography is not only cropping, cleaning and auto balancing your image to make that great shot.  However, I understand that in commercial, portrait, and creative photography, cropping, resetting, and altering the images is the norm.  Who wants to look at an advertisement for beauty cream with the face all blotchy and full of pimples? Have you ever seen a real live person that looks a perfect as they do in the magazine?


The secret for taking beautiful images lies in your aspiration, passion and admiration of the subject, if it be landscape, people, buildings or food.  For some reason, when you are attracted to the subject it shows in your images and they reflect your passion. Using techniques such as composition, angles, light can help you to create a wonderful image, that can only be tools to help enhance your images.  Using light can draw your focus onto your subject, the angle use can change the representation of your subject from short to tall for example. 

Perspective is important while deciding on what angle to use, what light is best to set up your shot.  Rule of thumb, take your time and never be in a hurry before taking a shot.  Imagine in your mind that instead of using your digital camera that allows you to trash the images you do not like, you are using film.  That precious film that costs so much to develop each roll and each shot depends on your angles, perspective, and lighting.  This way, you can learn to be careful and think before snapping and shooting your image.

Here are a few important tips for enhancing your images:

Perspective:
Don’t just walk up to something that you want to take a picture of and snap a shot!  Don’t only look at the subject from eye level!  Walk around your subject, if you can, or take a one -meter step to your left, to your right, up and down while looking through your viewer.  Do you see anything that stands out to you?  Which position reflects what you want to show in your image?  Take a series of shots from different angles.  I saw a new stature in front of the Pitti Palace in Florence, Italy and walked around it. Like This!

Perspective 1

Perspective 2

Perspective 3

Perspective 4

Perspective 5

You can see the difference with the various perspectives, just by walking around the statue and taking my time and looking at what I am seeing!
Which one do you like best?

Related lessons:

Tips on How to Use our Disposable Cameras

Documentary Photography Lesson 1

Documentary Photography Lesson 2

Street Photography Lesson 1

Street Photography and your Camera

Street Photography Tips

Holga Camera

F/16 Rule and Apertures

What is the difference between Street Photography and Documentary?
Four Easy Steps to Learn panning 

Tips for Night Photography

Aperture and f/16 Rule
Shutter Speed Basics

Bracketing

Rule of Thirds

Depth of Field

Photography Basics

Common Photography Terms

Focused Bracketing or Photo Stacking

Exposure

Susan Brannon

22 July 2011

Exposure is how much light is absorbed into your cameras sensor.  If the shot is exposed for too long, the image will be “washed out”, by letting too much light exposed to your film or digital sensor.  If the image is too dark, then the exposure was too short.

Most cameras have a “light sensor” with a meter inside of your camera that you can see when you look through the lens.  This meter will tell you how much light is being exposed to the sensor.  Normally, there is a middle line which is telling you that the exposure is just right, if it is to the right, then it is too much, or to the left, there is not enough exposure.

If you learn how to control your exposure, you can create some beautiful images.
To do this, you will need to control your shutter speed (The amount of time that your shutter opens to expose the light) and your aperture (The size of the lens opening to let the light in)

Example:  Lets say you are near a fountain in a garden and the correct exposure is f/8; 1/250s with a ISO of 100.  You decide that you want to freeze the water coming out of the fountain, but you cannot make your image any darker (underexposed) or too bright (over exposed)  What do you do?
a) Change your shutter speed to 1/500s, this allows ½ of the amount of light in.  But you cannot stop there, because then your image will be underexposed.  You must compensate to do this
B) Change your f-stop to 5.6, which will give you a larger aperture to let in more light. 

Now you have the same exposure for the image, but your shutter speed is faster that will allow you to freeze the water!

Example:  You are inside and the light is too low to obtain the correct exposure but the problem is that you camera will not be steady and your image will be blurred.  Your settings are:  f/5.6; 1/60s and ISO 100. The largest aperture for you camera is f/4, one stop faster that will result in f/4; 1/125s/ ISO 100.  The shutter speed is still too slow and you will have camera shake.  Since you cannot change the aperture anymore you will have to change your shutter speed and ISO to compensate.  Change your ISO to 200 and up one step to f/250s.  This will allow you to take your image and be sharp enough to take a photograph.

See?  All three parts are related to each other the ISO, shutter speed and aperture.  If you change just one, then your image will be either overexposed or underexposed.  If you change both, you can keep the balance.

Instead of falling water, i included falling snow!  This was taken at f/7.1; 1/25s and ISO 640

Overexposure:

This occurs when the sensor is exposed to too much light.  The result will be white images or white around the areas of the light source.  Sometimes it is impossible to expose the image without any overexposed areas.

Underexposure:

This is the opposite of overexposure, the sensor does not pick up enough light creating dark and black areas.

Note if you are using a digital camera, it is always easier to bring back shades and color from an underexposed image, than the other way around.  (Using PhotoShop)

Related lessons:

Tips on How to Use our Disposable Cameras

Documentary Photography Lesson 1

Documentary Photography Lesson 2

Street Photography Lesson 1

Street Photography and your Camera

Street Photography Tips

Holga Camera

F/16 Rule and Apertures

What is the difference between Street Photography and Documentary?
Four Easy Steps to Learn panning 

Tips for Night Photography

Aperture and f/16 Rule
Shutter Speed Basics

Bracketing

Rule of Thirds

Depth of Field

Photography Basics

Common Photography Terms

Focused Bracketing or Photo Stacking

Photography Basics

Susan Brannon

20 July 2011

How a Camera Works Made Simple

The word “photography” is French derived from the Greek language, in English it means “drawing from light”.   Photography is really all about light and how the camera works.
In a camera, light travels from the object to the sensor in film cameras.  The light goes through the lens to the sensor.

When you set your aperture inside the lens, that opens and closes depending on how you set it, little or lots of light will hit your sensor.  The aperture is controlled by “f stops” f2.8 is wide and f/19 is small. The lower the number, the more light will be let in. (Remember this and it will be of great help!) Once the light hits your sensor, and is absorbed and transforms into pixels.

The image that the sensor picks up is upside down and then flips it.

The shutter is what controls how long the sensor is exposed, the longer the shutter is open the more light can be absorbed onto the sensor. There are numbers that represent the speed of the shutter, 1/1000 of a second is fast and 3 seconds is slow. Remember, the lower the number the less light will be let in.  The amount of light absorbed by your sensor is called “exposure”.  There are two things that control the exposure, the shutter speed and the aperture.

In addition, you have film that has sensitivity to light; in digitals, it is your sensor that is sensitive to light.  The film speeds of the film (sensitivity) are called ISO.  A low ISO speed required longer exposures; a high ISO speed requires less time to give the same exposure. 

One might ask, “Why are there all these controls?  Can’t we just use one control to tell the camera how much light to let it?”  Well, The various controls allow you to control other aspects of an image.  A shutter speed can help to freeze the subject in motion; the aperture controls the depth of field and what is focused in your image.
Complicated?  All this means is that you must understand, how much light you need to expose to your film or sensor in order to generate the type of image that you desire.

*Tip: Remember:
Shutter Speed: The lower the number the less light
Aperture: The higher the number the less light
ISO:  The higher the number the more sensitive the film or sensor is to light.

Related lessons:

Tips on How to Use our Disposable Cameras

Documentary Photography Lesson 1

Documentary Photography Lesson 2

Street Photography Lesson 1

Street Photography and your Camera

Street Photography Tips

Holga Camera

F/16 Rule and Apertures

What is the difference between Street Photography and Documentary?
Four Easy Steps to Learn panning 

Tips for Night Photography

Aperture and f/16 Rule
Shutter Speed Basics

Bracketing

Rule of Thirds

Depth of Field

Photography Basics

Common Photography Terms

Focused Bracketing or Photo Stacking 
Exposure

Tips for Night Photography

Susan Brannon
26 July 2011
It is difficult to take images at night and in low light, but to do so, is the fun challenge in photography!  Once, you set out and “practice” you will find your technique and afterwords there will be not a time in the day when you think, “I cannot take a photography because of the light!”

1)  For night photography, you will definitely need a tri-pod!  This will stabilize (duh) your camera and allow for longer exposures!

2)  Take if off Auto mode (you can keep the focus on Auto mode and place with the focal point)  This way you can play with your shots, reduce the brightness of the lights, and add some creativity to your images.

3)  Set your exposure to -2 or -1

4)  Avoid using flash.  This flushes out the natural light, and it may overexpose the image you are trying to shoot.  (Or flood out the background)

5)  Set your ISO to the maximum.  The higher the shutter speed the shorter the exposure you can use.  This is important for night photography.

6)  Experiment, take as many images as you can, alternate your exposure levels and doing this will increase your understanding in night time photography.

Tip:  If you are out running around in a beautiful place and decide that you really want to take some images but do not have your tri-pod.  You can always find a flat spot to place your camera that just may steady it enough to allow you to take your shot!

Remember:  Check the weather, for rain and/or clouds.  See when the sun sets and the moon rises.  Think of where you want to set up shop, and bring bug spray for the summer!

This one was not taken in the summer, but when it snowed in Florence, Italy I could not but help to run outside to capture this moment.  However, my film was black and white, so the glow from the night time light did not bounce off of the snow.

For this image I wanted to capture the glow of the buildings. The camera was set at: f/5.6; 1/6s and ISO 640

A rare moment in Florence History, The Duomo covered in Snow, with a beautiful orange sky in the background. This image was taken at f/5.6; 0.4s and ISO 640

Related lessons:

Tips on How to Use our Disposable Cameras

Documentary Photography Lesson 1

Documentary Photography Lesson 2

Street Photography Lesson 1

Street Photography and your Camera

Street Photography Tips

Holga Camera

F/16 Rule and Apertures

What is the difference between Street Photography and Documentary?
Four Easy Steps to Learn panning 
High Noon Photography Tips

Aperture and f/16 Rule
Shutter Speed Basics

Bracketing

Rule of Thirds

Depth of Field

Photography Basics

Common Photography Terms

Focused Bracketing or Photo Stacking 
Exposure

Shutter Speed Basics

Susan Brannon
13 June 2011

The shutter is what controls how long the sensor is exposed, the longer the shutter is open the more light can be absorbed onto the sensor. The shutter speeds are controlled in seconds and fractions of seconds. There are numbers that represent the speed of the shutter, 1/1000 of a second is fast and 3 seconds is slow. Remember, the lower the number the less light will be let in.

You can see on your manual camera, or digital various settings of numbers that represent the shutter speed.

These are called full stops:

1/1000 s 1/500 s 1/250 s 1/125 s 1/60 s 1/30 s 1/15 s 1/8 s 1/4 s 1/2 s 1 s

A fast shutter speed (faster than 1/500th of a second) will allow you to freeze or stop motion while shooting movements.

The term “long exposure” normally refers to the amount of time the shutter stays open, for 1 second and over.  It is difficult to shot long exposures without a tripod because your camera will pick up the slightest movements.  It is difficult to shot a photo at anything from 1/60 and lower.  Sometimes a good trick is to lean against something like a wall, and hold you breath while making the shot.  You can also find something nearby to set your camera on for the shot.

I made some samples of a fixed f-stop with different shutter speeds in the daylight.

f/16 at 1/10 shutter speed

f/16 at 1/13 shutter speed

f/16 at 1/15 shutter speed

f/16 at 1/20 shutter speed

f/16 at 1/25 shutter speed

f/16 at 1/25 shutter speed

f/16 at 1/30 shutter speed

f/16 at 1/40 shutter speed

f/16 at 1/50 shutter speed

f/16 at 1/60 shutter speed

 With the samples, you can see the difference with how much light the shutter speed is absorbed to the sensor or film.  When there is too much light, the colors are all washed out as in shutter speeds 10/13/20 and 25. The images are too dark when there is not enough light as in shutter speeds 50/60.  The foliage in the background has lost its details and dimensions.


*Tips:
Action:  It is good to set your shutter speed at the fastest speed you can depending on your lighting.

Landscape:  You will want the slowest shutter speed possible with a higher f-stop to generate a good depth of field.

Night shots:  You will want the slowest shutter speed possible (good to use a tripod!) turn off the flash, and use the fastest film speed.

Related lessons:

Related lessons:

Tips on How to Use our Disposable Cameras

Documentary Photography Lesson 1

Documentary Photography Lesson 2

Street Photography Lesson 1

Street Photography and your Camera

Street Photography Tips

Holga Camera

F/16 Rule and Apertures

What is the difference between Street Photography and Documentary?
Four Easy Steps to Learn panning 
High Noon Photography Tips
Tips for Night Photography

Aperture and f/16 Rule
Shutter Speed Basics

Bracketing

Rule of Thirds

Depth of Field

Photography Basics

Common Photography Terms

Focused Bracketing or Photo Stacking 
Exposure