The journey of a photographer starting from acquiring basic photography skills to becoming an expert is not a short one. It requires practice and patience. This timely process can be made joyful and fruitful by mastering basic skills such as camera handling and knowing the various camera settings to enhance the quality of your pictures. As an expert photographer David Sechovicz suggests you various tips and techniques.
As soon as you select a suitable camera and hold it in your hands, learn to support the camera properly to avoid any shaky pictures. Explore the function of all the buttons and what kind of effects can they provide to your photos. Research online and watch videos to deeply study your camera settings. This will help you to enhance the creativity in your photographs and bring liveliness to them.
Before diving into the depths of this field, let’s explore the basic features required to sharpen your photography skills. The three main aspects of photography include shutter speed, aperture, and ISO range. Shutter speed allows the camera to take photos in still or moving scenarios. It is the time required to take the photo while the shutter is open. This time may vary from a few milliseconds to a few minutes. Depending on the shutter speed, you can get a moving blur picture or a sharp image. On the one hand, you can take a blurred photo of a moving car with a longer shutter speed while on the other hand, a slower shutter speed will generate a sharp image of a moving car.
Another important aspect to study is the aperture value. Aperture signifies the openness of your camera to light. It affects the brightness of your picture. It is measured by the f values. A lower f value would mean a wider aperture. A wider aperture indicates that your camera is widely open for light and your image will have a higher brightness. This kind of aperture is essential to capture portraits of people and animals. A higher f value, on the contrary, means a narrow aperture. This will result in lower brightness in the final images. Landscape photography is a type of photography style that requires a narrow aperture.
The third most important aspect of camera settings is the ISO range which may vary from 100 to 3600. An ISO range of 100 is the lowest and would result in darker images. An ISO range of 3600 is the brightest. Similarly, ISO 200 means double the brightness of the images as compared to images with ISO 100 settings. Depending on the lighting and situation, you can vary your ISO ranges. If you are getting good lighting and sunshine, a lower ISO setting would work perfectly for your pictures. Whereas for a cloudy day photoshoot, you may want to increase the ISO level thereby providing high color noise to your images. Mostly, the camera adjusts its ISO level automatically. You would need to study the various ISO settings on auto mode before trying out your hand on the manual mode.
Once you get a hold of these features and hone your basic skills, you can go forward to learn the expertise level and become a professional.
Author: David Sechovicz — I am a photography enthusiast. A thinker, dreamer, lover of all things whimsical and magical. I love photography and am passionate about art. To me art doesn’t have to be pretty. It has to be meaningful. Now let’s remember the world “revolves” because of people’s creativity.
