Back To Basics: Photography
Most sports fan know what it means for a team to go into what’s called a rebuilding year.This is done to correct bad habits and train new people when owners or coaches decide it just needs to be done. And invariably, what team leadership says when they go into such a time is that they are going “back to basics.”
Sometimes it’s good for us as photographers to go back to photography basics .If you are just beginning in the world of photography and you want to learn the ropes, the basics are the place to start.However you want to learn the basics of what professionals know about the art of photography.
Anyone can take pictures. 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.
Obviously, the cornerstone of digital photography basics is the camera. 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. But look at the professionals and you see them working with portable, relatively easy to operate cameras. That is because the basics of running a camera come down to aperture and shutter speed.
Now don’t get nervous about fancy terms.The camera lens lets lgiht into the camera and how wide open it is set to is called the aperture.The length of time you allow light to come in and affect the picture is called the shutter speed. 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 need to learn about flash photography and lenses in order to learn how to control the lighting in a shot. So add to your core skills of photography a willingness to never stop learning. The better and more sophisticated you get in your ability to work with the equipment, the more you will learn and the more you will want to learn.
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 basic of digital photography 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.
The best way to build your confidence in order to become a great photographer is to learn by doing.Never become cocky, you can always learn more.This one of the fun things with photography?
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