Basic Exposure Techniques

 

Lighting plays the major role in the photographing process. This is because bad lighting will obscure the photo’s subjects and composition, leaving little to be appreciated. Good lighting, on the other hand, defines the form of your subjects and show them in vivid colors. That’s why the camera should be set to collect the correct amount of light.

Exposure is the amount of light that is collected by the photographic medium, whether it is a film or a digital sensor, while shooting a single photograph. There is no fixed value of a correct amount of light, because it depends on the available lights, the objects, and the photographer’s judgment. However, it is safe to say that there’s an acceptable exposure and an unacceptable exposure. Most exposures that obscure details while not adding any artistic value are considered unacceptable.

Low lighting conditions require high exposures to allow more light into the sensor, brightening up the final photograph. If less exposure is used, the photograph will become darker as a result of the underexposure. As for bright light conditions, low exposure will be enough to gather sufficient amount of light to produce a photo with good lighting. Otherwise, the photograph will be overexposed, having too many bright areas, the bright subjects loosing their details, and the dark subjects looking too bright..

Exposure relies on two factors: shutter speed (exposure time) and aperture. Shutter speed determines how long the sensor will be exposed to light. Slow shutter speed means more exposure, while fast speed will allow less exposure. As for aperture, it determines how wide the lens is opened. Narrow aperture will let less light pass through it than a wide aperture. ISO speeds also affect the degree of exposure. Higher ISO speeds will make the sensor more sensitive to light, reducing exposure, but it will add undesired noise to the photos.

In manual exposure mode, aperture and shutter speed are usually set independently. As for automatic exposure settings, the camera will determine the degree of exposure needed according to the light metering technique used. Exposure compensation is a method of adjusting the exposure by adding fixed exposure values, which is also very useful for camera owners who don’t have manual exposure settings.

Photographs with very dark and very bright spots will not show correct exposure on all their parts using any type of cameras. Usually, photographers take the same photograph at different exposures, and combine them together using software programs.

A good approach to learn more about exposure is to look at the exposure settings of your previous photographs, and compare them Look for the exposure time (shutter speed), the aperture, the ISO speed, and the exposure compensation in the data that is stored in your image files. As a result, you will get a clearer idea on how exposure can impact your photos.

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Close Ups – Filling the Frame

An ordinary composition of a photograph will contain one or more subjects as focal points and a surrounding consisting of other objects. Based on all these elements, an observer will be able to recognize, the subject, the environment, and the message. All this is good, but what if another impact on the observer is desired? What if you want to leave little hints, in order to keep him guessing?

Boring surroundings may have a very bad effects on your subject, because, most probably, they will not have elements to balance the photographs, leaving a lot of empty spaces. An effective remedy to this is to fill the frame with your subject, so as to get rid of these empty spaces.

Sometimes it is even better to include nothing but your subject. For example, consider this situation in which you are photographing a wild animal at the zoo. With a normal composition, you will probably include the animal, the cage, and maybe some spectators. Getting rid of all the element except for the animal itself, may make the photograph look as if it was taken in the wild. The ambiguity resulted from close-ups lead observers use their imaginations to complete the picture .A close-up on two hands holding each others will strike a certain emotion that may be different from one person to the other, depending on his experience. Here, all you did is that you removed the subjects’ personalities, so as to give a space for the observer to think.

Portraits are usually a strong candidate for closeups. Sure you can take a great portrait with your subject in an interesting environment, but you can also get a very nice one too with just focusing on him. Filling the frame with your subject will produce a very personal look. Getting even closer to just include the face – sometimes with eye contact – can bring a feeling of amicability, as if you were staying face to face with the subject. Close-ups on other body parts produce great photos too; they may create an abstract feel, or emphasize a certain action.

Close-ups also suit still life photographs very well. This allows you to see usual things in very unusual ways, revealing many details that were not obvious before. This kind of photography is usually used in stock and product photography.

A frame can be filled by walking towards your subject, zooming on it, or by cropping a photograph. While zooming is an on-camera process, cropping is usually done using photo-editing software, giving you more flexibility to set your composition, but with sacrificing the image’s original size.

The simplest compositions may sometimes be the richest. So use your imagination, and make your audience use theirs.

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The Famous Rule of Thirds in Photography

As you are interested in photography, then you must have heard about the Rule of Thirds. Basically, it relies on how the humans eye perceive a photograph . That’s why, according to the rule, the subject should be placed along imaginary lines indicating the best spots within the photograph.

The reason why this rule is very well known is that it is pretty easy to apply. By just putting your subject in the correct position, you will have a photo complying with it.

A photograph is divided into a 3×3 grid similar to that of thee famous Tic-tac-toe game. This is done by putting four lines (two horizontal and two vertical) each at one third of the photograph, hence the name of the rule. Thus, we will have four intersection points, each of which is a hot-spot for framing the subjects . In general, the lines together with the intersection points should be used to align the main subjects of your photos so as to have one that complies with the Rule of Thirds.

In case of closeups, the subject itself will probably be bigger than the whole frame. As a result, interesting features within the subject should be aligned instead. In case of facial portraits, for example, the face usually covers most, if not all, of the viewfinder leaving the facial features to be aligned. Eyes are usually placed along the top horizontal line. This will put emphasis on the eye, frame the whole face, and leave no details out of the picture.

Landscape photographers use this rule too. A lone subject in the foreground (a tree for example) is a perfect candidate to be aligned to one of the vertical lines. As for the background, horizons are usually aligned to one of the horizontal lines. A landscape scene may contain fields, mountain or clouds. These can also be aligned to the lines of thirds and, if possible, separated in different thirds, producing a well composed photograph.

Despite being important to the composition, some flexibility should exist when applying this rule. For instance, if you align everything in perfect compliance with the rule just to discover that an essential part will not be included inside the frame, slightly moving the viewfinder to include all the details will not cause any damages. Another example is when trying to create the mirroring effect using reflections. Here, the mirror line (the line separating the reflection from the real) is usually aligned at the middle.

The Rule of Thirds is an easy to learn, yet very effective technique. By using it, you will be able to produce photos that are very appealing to the eyes.

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