The Basics of Photography

Posted on | May 19, 2009 | No Comments

Most sports fan know what it means for a team to go into what’s called a rebuilding year.This is when coaches and owners decide it is time to correct bad habits in people and train new ones as well.All teams leadership say when they go to such a circumstance is they are going back to the basics.”

Sometimes it’s good for us as photographers to go back to digital photography basics .The basics are the place to start if you want to learn the ropes especially if you are just getting started in the world of photography.You need to know the basics that all the professionals know about the craft of photograghy.

Taking pictures is easy anybody can do it.  I attended a wedding reception where the wedding party left a disposable digital camera on each table at the reception for guests to snap photos.  Before the evening was over, it was the children who were running around taking pictures of everything from the dirty dishes to their own underwear.  These were not photographers and while those pictures will no doubt get a few chuckles, these are not the kind of professional pictures people want for their long-term memories.

It goes without saying that the camera is the conerstone of digital photography basics .  When you see a camera geek walking around with enough equipment on his neck to launch a space shuttle, you get the impression that cameras are phenomenally complex, more than mere mortals can grasp.If you notice professionals you’ll see them working with light weight, portable and easy to operate cameras.  That is because the basics of running a camera come down to aperture and shutter speed.

Don’t let fancy terms bother you.The camera lens lets lgiht into the camera and how wide open it is set to is called the aperture.The shutter speed is the amount of time you allow light to enter the lens and in turn affect the picture.  For getting a shot of a fast moving event, you want a wide aperture to let in a lot of light but a short shutter speed so you capture the event quickly and close the window so the picture is caught before more light hurts the quality.

Photography is really all about light.  You can and will get learn a lot about lenses and flash photography and other ways to turn the control over the lighting of a shot to you.  So add to your core skills of photography a willingness to never stop learning.As you get better and more sophisticated in your ability to work with equipment you will want to learn more and you will learn more.

You can get a greater control over these basic controls of the camera such as aperture and shutter speed by learning how to switch from automatic settings to manual settings.  The automatic settings of any camera are just there for the general public who are not interested in learning the basics.  So they give you some basic settings like landscape, portrait and sports settings.  By switching to manual, you can learn what settings work best in different situations.

We now come to the concept of practice which is the most important digital photography basics to becoming a great photographer.Take the time to play with and learn your equipment.  Take it to situations and take photos with different aperture and shutter speed settings, in outdoor and indoor settings and different orientations to light.When some shots don’t work, don’t get upset.  That’s part of the learning curve.

By learning by doing, you will build your confidence in your work and eventually become a great photographer.  But don’t get cocky, there is always more to learn.Isn’t that one of the fun things about photography?

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photography

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