4.Explore The Depth Of The Field

Now enough romance about light. Let’s get practical.

Depth of field is a huge part of your photography that you probably greatly underestimate.

I know, because I underestimate it. And I know that I do, and I still do. You know?

Depth of field is one of those things that seems simple at the outset, and gets progressively more complex the more you learn. But learning about it, even at the basic level, will make a huge transformation in your work.

For instance, without first learning about depth of field, you might think that to get some background blur in your image, you just need to decrease your aperture value.

But you didn’t take the focal length, subject to background distance, and camera to subject distance into account. And with a certain combination of factors. your aperture might actually have very little to no affect on your depth of field. It’s true. Sometimes there’s no discernible depth of field difference between f/1.4 and f/11.

Once you start to understand how all of these interact, you can start to get impressive background blur, even with a point and shoot camera at a high aperture, just by knowing exactly how to control all the variables.

Another misconception about depth of field is the idea that “shallow is always better”.  When you’re just getting started, shallow depth of field is a new and exciting technique. But it can be overused. Ever seen what a head shot taken at 85 mm f/1.2 looks like? It’s easy to get distracted by the beautiful bokeh, and forget to notice that not even an entire eyeball is in focus. Um, not quite right.

Don’t be afraid of high apertures. Or low apertures. In fact, don’t be afraid of your aperture at all. Learn how depth of field works, and then use it as a creative decision to make each and every image just right. That’s what a great photographer does. They know their options, and use them all.

3.The Master Light

Let me start off by saying that I don’t think anyone can truly be the master of light (except maybe the Greek God Apollo). We photographers are the glad and willing slaves to light. Without it we can’t do our work. And it can be a fickle master (especially if you use natural light).

But to learn about light. To understand it’s many facets and subtleties. To know how to work with it in any circumstance. To create it. To seek it. Well, this is really the photographer’s lifelong pursuit. We won’t ever really be the master, but we may come close, with a lot of respect and decades of practice.

Where to begin? Simple. Outside. The are endless lighting opportunities waiting for you when you step outdoors. Can you shoot in harsh midday sun? Golden hour light? After the sun goes down? When the stars come out?

Then hop back inside. Use the light of windows. There is unlimited variety there, and you can really start to get the finer points down in such a simple (but complex) scenario.

Ready to keep learning? Try your hand at creating your own light (like a wizard!). Learn how to use an external flash. Rent, borrow or buy a few studio lights, and start to create your own lighting setups.

Keep seeking light, keep learning about it, and keep pushing yourself into new lighting situations. It will bring you a lifetime of photographic adventures, and more than a few great images.

2.Understand the Exposure

    

Once you have a solid grasp on aperture, shutter speed and ISO, and how they affect the look of your photos, you need to put them all together and learn how they balance to create a good exposure.

One of the trickiest things is first figuring out just what people mean by a “good exposure”. Some folks make it seem like there’s a right exposure and a wrong exposure and if you get it wrong you’re pretty much a doofus.

That’s silly.

And if you go online and try to get a clear definition? Ha, good luck! They are all super confusing, and don’t really get to the heart of how to actually create a good exposure. (My personal favourite is “The intensity of light falling on a photographic film multiplied by the time for which it is exposed”….Uh…so do I need a calculator for this?)

So we made up our own definition of exposure:

A good exposure is how bright you want the image to be.

If it’s brighter than you want, it’s overexposed. If it’s darker than you want, it’s underexposed.

Simple.

In the end it’s your own creative decision. You’re the photographer after all. But you need to know how to adjust all your settings to get that exposure you’re looking for, and how to use your camera to help you figure it out.

7 Essential Things Every Photographer Needs to Learn

      So you want to take great photos? You want to up your game as a photographer? This is where to start.

• Know Your Camera
• Understand the Exposure
• The Master Light
• Explore The Depth Of The Field
• Get to Know Perspective
• Conquer Position
• Perfect Your Post-Processing
• Conclude

1.Know Your Camera:

 Would you believe there are professional photographers out there that don’t fully know how to control their camera? It’s true. How do I know?

I used to be one of them.

Yep,it’s a big ugly confession,but it’s true.We started off shooting in Aperture Priority mode,and let the camera do the

thinking for us.

We thought it was faster and easier than learning all that scary technical stuff. And you can fake it here for a while.

Cameras are smarter than ever, and they can get pretty close for you. But not knowing this stuff will truly hold you back,

and keep you firmly in the “fluking it” category.

What I’m talking about here is needing to understand the essential features of your camera and your lens, and knowing

how that affects the look of your images.

You need to know how changing your aperture changes the look of your photo. You need to understand how to set your shutter

speed to get the results you want. 

You need to be able to make decisions with your ISO that fit your situation. And then, based on what features your camera

has, you’ll need to know about drive modes, white balance, focusing, stabilization modes and so on.

Luckily this stuff isn’t as hard as it sounds. In fact you can learn it all in just a few hours. Once you do,

you’ll be ready to move on to the next level.

About Photography

Photography is the science art, application and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film.

Typically, a lens is used to focus the light reflected or emitted from objects into a real image on the light-sensitive surface inside a camera during a timed exposure.With an electronic image sensor, this produces an electrical charge at each pixel, which is electronically processed and stored in a digital image file for subsequent display or processing. The result with photographic emulsion is an invisible latent image, which is later chemically "developed" into a visible image, either negative or positive depending on the purpose of the photographic material and the method of processing. A negative image on film is traditionally used to photographically create a positive image on a paper base, known as a print, either by using an enlarger or by contact printing.

Photography is employed in many fields of science, manufacturing (e.g., photo lithography), and business, as well as its more direct uses for art, film and video production, recreational purposes, hobby, and mass communication.