Introduction to Photography

Taking a photograph is made up of three basic steps.

1. Composition
2. Focus
3. Exposure

It is more complicated then this, but these are the basic fundamental processes, this is the creative companion article, to the technical article “Introduction to the Camera”, which covers focus and exposure, but in a technical light.

While your camera may be able to accurately focus and expose your image in a technical sense, it however, cannot accurately focus and expose a photograph, your camera only has technical data and measurements of the world to make it's choice on what it thinks is best focus (including depth of field) and exposure.

No camera can compose your image for you.

Exposure
Exposure governs how your overall image looks, to put it simply, it will control how “bright” or “dark” your image is.

Ever taken a picture of someone standing in front of light (like someone with a sunset behind them or sunlight coming from behind them) and you find that they are a silhouette, and the sky is nice and blue and the sunset area nice and yellow/orange, except thats not what you wanted, you wanted a bright person, even if its at the expensive the background turning white?

This is automatic exposure wrecking your image (but also poor choice in considering light, since it's also subject placement, poor composition as well at a stretch).

The simple solution is to increase exposure, ie: make the image brighter, bright enough so the person is show in full detail, though most likely you'll lose your sunset or other background, it'll turn white.

Consider the lighting and place them in appropriate lighting, perhaps not so harshly backlit.

Perhaps you wanted both a nice pretty sunset background with deep colours, but correctly exposed skin for your subject?

Without getting into technical issues which is not the aim of this article, the simple way is to use flash (perhaps diffused it with some tissue), you basically need more light on the subject from the front anyway you can get it.

Where does creative control come into exposure? It's all related to lighting – even when you got no control of lighting, you should be consider the lighting, and where to shoot from.

Lighting
If you wanted to shoot a white subject against a white background, you will probably want to light and expose it to be high key (do a google image search for high key).

Conversely, you most likely do not want to shoot a black subject against a black background as high key, you probably want to light and expose it for low key (again google image search...), in fact, anything you imagine dipping out into shadow, you will most likely want to shoot low key.

Low key is completely possible outside of the studio world in the natural environment, you just need the right light and the right placement in that light, perhaps with a little help from a reflecting or fill card (dont spend money on these things, they are just reflective materials! Like foil glued down on some cardboard for example... a fill card is styrofoam, side of a styrofoam box, fill cards are highly diffused and need to be held up much closer and to the subject and need to catch direct light).

There are two kinds of light, non-diffused (hard) and diffused (soft), hard light is direct light, for example, mid day or after noon or morning etc, harsh shadows are cast everywhere, this is hard light, hard light causes harsh shadows. Now, imagine an overcast day (or after sunset while it's still light), where are the shadows? They're there, but they are very soft, this is diffused lighting.

You want to shoot something outdoors, mid day, but do not want harsh light? Shoot in the shade, the shade is diffused, adjust exposure as necessary.

The Key Light
When setting up lighting we have the key light, this is the main light, it may either be diffused or hard, generally placed somewhere around the 45 degree mark towards the subject (facing the subject youre shooting from somewhere between the side and the front).

The idea behind the key light is throw shadow to show the form of the subject (for example a toned stomach).

You dont have a studio? You do too, it's called the outdoors, the sun is the key light, and its generally up high, so consider it's position next time when shooting and where the light is hitting, again with only 1 light to work with, reflectors and fill cards are the way to go, get a friend to hold them, they do make a difference.

Focus
Focus? You should know what focus is by now, if not, read the “Introduction to the Camera” article, this also covers depth of field.

Focus and depth of field in a creative application generally means selective focus? Landscape? You probably want to maximise your depth of field? Portrait? In a studio you have so much control over lights its not a huge concern.

If you want to shoot people outdoors, you have so much more space to back away from the subject and place the subject at a longer distance from the 'backdrop' you should be pulling out your longer lenses, even on a slow kit lens, this will give you a nice depth of field, and let you make more 'pro' images in the outdoors, (a friend to use a reflector or fill card comes highly recommended for that extra little bit)

Focus affects your composition, you can have foreground elements out of focus, they can be distracting or help change negative space or help lead the eye to the focal point of your image, try to analyse your own images.

Composition
This is a biggy.

Okay we have a thing called the rule of thirds, which was adapted from the painter's rule of thirds, it basically stays unchanged.

You draw two vertical lines up and down your picture, and two horizontal lines across your picture (no matter what ratio your image is or whether it is in portrait orientation) evenly, so that your picture is divided evenly into thirds.

There are four points where these lines intersect, these are commonly known as points of power or points of natural interest, if your place your main focal point (centre of interest) on or near one of these points, it will strengthen your composition as to simply framing dead smack bang in the centre, if your pictures seem somewhat lacking, try this.

When you do this though, there are other issues to deal with, like negative space, and finding a way to have the rest of the frame lead the viewer's eyes straight to your focal point.

Negative Space
Negative space is empty space.

It is the space that surrounds an object (your subject), if your subject has a bunch of positive space around it, generally, it will be cluttered and lost.

Negative and positive space can form shapes, and lines, lines and shapes in any form can lead the viewers eye.

If you have more than one type of space than the other, you image can seem unbalanced, and of poor composition, though there are many cases where more of one or the other will work, this normally doesn't happen by accident.

Of course you can have compisitionally poor 'balanced' images, such as subjects dead centre in the frame, near symmetrical like, the horizon line of a landscape also dead centre across the middle of the frame is another example.

Leading Lines
Lines of any type in an image can be used as leading lines.

Leading lines direct a viewer's eyes in an image to a focal point (well actually they can lead you anywhere, and can easily be misused or accidentally used to ruin an image), they are quite powerful.

Right now, google image search leading lines.

You see some powerful images you like? You want to try something like this? These images also use perspective (so try a wide angle lens), try to combine the rule of thirds, placing your subject on a point of interest, use lines to lead to it, and consider the negative space.

Lines can also divide an image into segments and shapes.