Basics of Photography - Part I

Welcome to my blog folks!! For anyone who is new to DSLR Photography, it's been essential to understand the basics of photography. I would like to share some of my experiences on DSLR photography through this blog, specifically on the basics here.

At the outset, Photography is an art and science put together, meaning, it involves both the right and left brain of the person. In simple terms, both creative (C) and technical (T) side. 

Photography is all about the Exposure, Composition and Lighting. Having said that, doesn't mean one need to understand only those. But these are the 3 primary factors which decide how good your photograph looks. Other stuffs such as a knowledge of your Camera Body and the lens (its functions and effective aperture), focal lengths, metering, depth-of-field, "bokeh" etc will help one to capture great photographs. 

"If we do not understand the gears we use, great photographs will be an accident. If we understand it better way, it will be an art."

Lighting (T)

As you all know, this is the basis for any photograph to look better or worst.. It decides whether the photograph is under-exposed or over-exposed.. In a moment, we will define what is exposure as well.. There are some tools in the camera display (Histogram) which guides the photographer to understand whether the photo captured is under/over exposed. Lighting is the technical part of photography.

Lighting can be categorized into available lighting or infused lighting (usually through built-in flash, external flash, off-camera flash, reflectors etc). The infused lighting is more of a creative approach whereas the available lighting gives you more of a natural look. Usually studio settings or advanced photographers will use infused lighting as how they want to portray the subjects.

 

Exposure (T)

This is a general term which refers to how well you are exposing your camera's film/sensor to the lighting and the object.  Usually the exposure can be controlled through Shutter Speed, Aperture, ISO (in Digital Cameras), Film Sensitiveness (Cameras prior to digital era). The units for lighting in photography is usually termed in 'f-stops', where 'f' is letter used to denote the aperture. Usually the lens aperture will be calibrated or printed with the maximum (f1.4) and minimum (f22) f-stops. Exposure is the technical part of photography.

Following are the example images that shows the difference between 3 exposures... Under-exposed, Over-exposed and correctly exposed. 

In terms of gears, the example can be sited as Canon 18 - 55 mm f 3.5 - 5.6. Here f3.5 is the maximum aperture for this lens (photos will be exposed to more lighting due to bigger aperture hole) and f5.6 is the minimum aperture (photos will be exposed to relatively less lighting due to comparatively smaller aperture hole)

For more details about the exposure, please visit the link "Exposure Basics"

 

Composition (C)

This is how we compose the photographs either while we capture the moment or through post-processing (usually cropping the photo). In other terms, we can say it as photographer's perspective of the subject and its surroundings. There are various rules and techniques which helps us to compose the photographs. Composition is the creative part of the photography. 

Following images gives a glimpse of different composition techniques... 

For more composition tips, please visit the link "Composition Tips"

I highly recommend everyone of you read through the reference link mentioned below that has tons of information which helped me to learn photography easily. 

More basics on photography is covered in Basics of Photography - Part II 


References

• Exposure Guide.