Photography rules (5)

Metering Modes
The camera’s exposure sensor, known as an exposure meter, does the majority of the work when figuring out how to shoot a picture. It decides how much light is needed to adequately expose your picture. So it should come as no surprise to learn that cameras distinguish themselves by the kind of meter they use. Some meters are better than others at metering a scene and applying the right exposure.

Center-Weighted Meters
This meter measures the light throughout the image, but applies more weight, or importance, to the central part of the scene in the viewfinder. The assumption, usually a good one, is that you are most interested in the stuff in the front of the picture, so the camera tries to get that part of the scene exposed properly. Most digital cameras rely on this for ordinary picture taking.

Matrix Meters
The matrix meter is famous for its ability to properly expose tricky scenes by balancing the lighting needs of five or more discrete regions within a picture. Instead of concentrating primarily on the middle, matrix meters gauge the light in many parts of the scene at once. If your camera has a matrix meter mode, you should use it most of the time.

Spot Meters
The last major kind of light meter is called a spot. The spot meter is never the only kind of meter in a camera; instead, it’s an option that you can switch to if the center-weighted or matrix meter fails you. The spot meter measures light exclusively in the center one percent of the screen, ignoring the rest of the frame completely. That can come in handy on occasion, but a meter that only measured the light in the central one percent of the frame would typically take very poor pictures, either highly under- or overexposed depending upon the situation.
So when should you use the spot meter? Any time you are trying to photograph a scene in which a small subject must be exposed properly for the picture to work and its lighting is different enough from the rest of the scene that you’re worried it won’t come out right otherwise.
Imagine, for instance, that you are trying to photograph someone who is standing in front of a brightly lit window. If you let the camera decide the exposure, the bright light from the window will radically underexpose the subject. So switch on the spot meter and expose the picture based on the subject. Yes, the window light will be overexposed, but that’s okay, the important part of  the picture is the person.
Varying the metering mode, especially the spot meter, is best used in conjunction with the exposure lock.

Using Exposure Lock
Exposure lock is almost always achieved by applying slight pressure to the shutter release, not enough to activate the shutter and take the picture, but enough that you feel the button move and the camera itself respond.
The magic of exposure lock is that as long as you continue applying light pressure to the shutter release, the camera will use that “locked-in” exposure information regardless of where you later point the camera. You can lock in exposure information for the sky and then point the camera at your feet and snap the shutter release all the way. You’ll take a picture of your feet using the sky’s exposure data. You probably wouldn’t want to do that since the result will be totally underexposed, but it gives you an idea of the potential.
Exposure lock is a great tool for telling the camera that you’d like to take a picture with the exposure data from one specific part of the scene.

When to Take Control
You may often be perfectly satisfied with the results you can get from the automatic exposure controls in your camera. But there will be times when you can do better on your own.

Very Bright Sunlight
Very bright sun can overwhelm your camera, especially if the scene is filled with brightly colored clothing, reflective surfaces, or other tricky subjects. You can reduce the exposure for better effects. Underexpose the scene by EV –1 for starters, and see if that helps.

Backlit Subjects
If you are taking a picture of someone or something and the sun is behind the subject, you’re usually in trouble—the bright background will cause the camera to underexpose the scene. That means the subject itself will look like it’s in shadow. The best way to shoot an outdoor portrait is to put the sun over your shoulder. Nonetheless, if you find the sun behind your subject, overexpose the scene, such as with an EV +1.

Low Light
In low light, such as at night, indoors, or under thick cloud cover, you can often get better results by overexposing the scene slightly, such as with an EV +1. Vary the EV level depending on how dark the scene actually is.

Using Exposure Compensation
Most digital cameras come equipped with an exposure compensation control, usually referred to as the EV adjustment. The EV control allows you to lock in and use the camera’s recommended automatic exposure setting, but then adjust that value up or down based on factors that you’re aware of but the camera may not be smart enough to see. Each Exposure Value (EV) corresponds to changing the exposure by one stop, such as going from 1/60 to 1/30 (this is a change of +1 EV since it doubles the exposure) or 1/15 to 1/30 (this is –1 EV since it reduces the exposure by half). 

to be continued

Photography rules (4)

Using the exposure modes
Every digital camera on the market makes it easy to take quick-and-dirty snapshots using an automatic exposure mode. Automatic exposure is great much of the time, but when you want to get a little more creative you may need to adjust the exposure settings.
Usually digital cameras have automatic exposure modes as well as manual, priority, and program settings. Here’s what each of these settings does, and when you would want to use them:
- Automatic: In this mode, both shutter speed and aperture settings are selected by the camera to match the current lighting. Some digital camera automatic modes try to select the fastest shutter speed possible in order to minimize camera shake when you take a picture, while most choose something in the middle, a compromise between speed and depth of field. There’s generally nothing you can do to change the settings that the camera chooses when set to fully automatic, except for adjusting the exposure compensation (EV) to over- or underexpose the scene.
- Program: The program mode (usually indicated by the letter P on your camera’s dial or LCD display) is similar to an automatic mode. Although the camera selects both the aperture and shutter, on some cameras you can modify the camera’s selection by turning a dial or pressing a button. The effect: you can increase or decrease the shutter speed, and the camera will adjust the aperture to match. This is a good compromise between fully automatic operation and manual selection. Use this mode if you don’t want to worry about devising your own exposure values, but still want some say over the shutter speed or aperture.
The program exposure mode is often the best all-around setting for your camera. In this mode, the camera chooses a good exposure setting, but you can tweak the shutter speed. The camera will instantly compensate by changing the aperture setting, keeping the overall exposure the same.
- Shutter priority: Using this mode, you can dial in whatever shutter speed you like, and the camera accommodates by setting the appropriate aperture to match.
This mode is ideal for locking in a speed fast enough to freeze action scenes, or slow enough to intentionally blur motion.
- Aperture priority: Using this mode, you can dial in the aperture setting you like, and the camera accommodates by setting the appropriate shutter speed. Use this mode if you are trying to achieve a particular depth of field and you don’t care about the shutter speed.
- Manual: The manual mode (typically indicated with an M) is like an old-style
noncomputerized camera. In manual mode, you select the aperture and shutter speed on your own, sometimes with the help of the camera’s recommendation. This mode is best used for long exposures or other special situations when the camera’s meter is not reliable.

Choosing exposure modes and lenses in special situations
Every situation is a little bit different, but here are a few general guidelines that can get you started.

Portrait Photography
Taking pictures of people can be fun but intimidating. It’s hard to get a natural pose from people when they know they are being photographed. The best way to capture good portraits is to work with your subjects so they are a little more at ease. If you’re trying to capture spontaneous, candid moments, then back off and try to blend in with the background. If you’re trying to capture a fairly formal-looking portrait, you have a little more work cut out for you. It’s up to you as the photographer to put your subjects at ease. Talk to your subjects and get them to respond. If you can get them to loosen up, they’ll exhibit more natural responses and look better on film. Take pictures periodically as you pose your subjects to get them used to the shutter going off, even if it isn’t a picture you intend to keep.
The best way to capture portraits is typically with the medium telephoto lens: in the 35mm world, that would be about 100mm. It is also recommended to work in aperture priority mode. Aperture priority will allow you to change the depth of field quickly and easily as you frame your images. Specifically, good portraits have very shallow depth of field.
You want to draw attention to the subject of your picture, and leave the background an indistinct blur.



Action photography
Action photography is often considered the most exciting kind of photography, but it’s also the most demanding for both your technique and your equipment. As in all kinds of photography, you can no doubt take some great pictures with anything from a wide-angle lens all the way up to the photographic equivalent of the Hubble telescope. And wide-angle lenses do, in fact, have a role in action photography. But the essence of many action shots is a highly magnified immediacy, something you can only get with the telephoto lens.
The shutter priority setting on your digital camera was born for action photography. To freeze action, you’ll need to use a fairly fast shutter speed. Luckily, this higher shutter speed works to your advantage by opening up the aperture and diminishing the depth of field; this focuses the viewer’s attention specifically on your subject. On the downside, of course, focusing is more critical since the depth of field is more shallow.
In general, is recommended that you use the fastest shutter speed available to capture action.
On the other hand, you can use a technique called panning to capture the subject in good, sharp focus and keep the background as a motion blur. Panning is convenient both when you want to make a somewhat artistic statement about the subject’s motion and when you know the camera can’t muster up a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the motion the ordinary way.
Panning involves some effort on your part. To create a good pan, you need to twist your body in sync with the motion of the subject as you press the shutter release. Here’s how:
1. Position yourself where you can twist your body to follow the motion of the moving subject without having the camera’s line of sight blocked by something else.
2. Set the camera’s shutter speed for about 1/60. Feel free to experiment with this, but if you set the shutter speed too slow, you can’t capture the subject effectively—it blurs.
And if the shutter is too fast, you won’t get the pretty blur in the background.
3. Twist your body with the motion of the subject and track it through the camera’s viewfinder or on the LCD display. Press the shutter release and continue tracking the subject until after you hear the shutter close again. Just like in baseball or golf, ensure that you follow through the motion even after the shutter releases. That way, you don’t stop panning in the middle of the exposure. You may need to practice this a few times to get the shot right.
The farther away the background is, the less motion blur effect you’ll get. For best results, get close to the object and its background. If the background is too far away, the blur will be minimal and it’ll just look out of focus.



Nature and landscapes
Unlike action photography and portraiture that rely on telephoto lenses to compress the action into an intimate experience, landscapes typically work best with wide-angle lenses that allow you to include huge, expansive swaths of land, air, and sea in a single frame. Zoom out for best results most of the time, and adjust the camera’s exposure in aperture priority mode to get deep or shallow depth of field, depending upon what works best for the picture in question.

A few special kinds of nature shots warrant special mention here:
Photographing a waterfall or running stream: The two ways to capture running water in a photograph are with a fast, freeze-framing shot or with a longer exposure that blurs the water into a continuous stream effect. Both effects can look good, but the latter is better. The effect looks great, and it’s easy to do: you simply need to take a long exposure of the water.
Here’s how:
1. You need to ensure that your camera will give you a long exposure, on the order of a half second. You can get this by shooting in automatic mode in the early morning or late afternoon, or using a manual mode.
2. Set your camera on a tripod (the long exposure requires a steady support).
3. Compose the image and take the shot.

Shooting wildlife: Wildlife photography is like action photography; it typically takes a telephoto lens, fast shutter speed, and a tripod. Try to fill the frame as much as possible.

Dealing with shutter lag
Older digital cameras had a “shutter lag” that lasted nearly a second, but even the newest digital cameras have some lag.
Shutter lag happens because digital cameras have a veritable checklist of tasks to perform when you press the shutter release. Not only does the camera need to measure the distance to the subject and lock in the proper focus, but it has to measure the ambient light, calculate the best exposure, and lock in an aperture setting and shutter speed. It also has computer-like “housekeeping” chores to perform, like initializing the sensor chip, flushing buffers, and reading white level.
If your camera’s lag doesn’t bother you, fine. But if you want to minimize the lag, there are a few things you can do. The biggest time-saver is auto focus. If you pre-focus your picture, you can save valuable milliseconds of lag. If you’re more adventurous, you can also try pre-setting the camera’s white balance. If the white balance is set on auto, the camera will have to adjust the colors in the image each and every time you take a picture. Instead, you can use the camera’s menu to set the white balance for whatever lighting conditions you’re actually shooting in, such as daylight, night time, fluorescent, or incandescent lighting. Just remember to change the white balance for every new lighting situation you find yourself in.


to be continued

Photography rules (3)

part2

Depth of field
Another important thing that is needed for proper composition is called depth of field. Depth of field refers to the region of proper focus that is available in any photographic image. Usually this is not a thin region of proper focus in an image; instead, there’s some distance in front and behind the subject that will also be in focus. This entire region of sharp focus is called the depth of field, or sometimes the depth of focus.

What determines depth of field?
Three factors contribute to the depth of field.
- Aperture: The aperture of the lens is the first major factor that influences depth of field. Aperture is the size of the lens opening that determines how much light reaches the camera’s imaging sensor. Aperture is measured in f/stops, where lower f/numbers represent bigger openings and higher f/numbers are smaller openings. In addition, the smaller the aperture’s actual opening (or, in other words, the higher the f/number), the greater the depth of field will be.
- Focal length: Is just a measure of your lens’s ability to magnify a scene. The more you magnify your subject, the less depth of field you have available. When shooting with a normal or wide-angle lens, you have a lot of depth of field. If you zoom out to a telephoto magnification, your depth of field drops dramatically. Likewise, macro photography has very little depth of field as well, since you are greatly magnifying a small object.
- Subject distance: The distance from the subject determines how much depth of field you can get in your scene. If the subject is far away, the depth of field will be much greater than it is for a subject that is close to the camera. That means the region of sharp focus for a macro shot is extremely narrow, and you need to focus very, very precisely while for something very far away a vast region in front of and behind the image will be in sharp focus.

Applying depth of field in pictures
The three factors (aperture, depth of field, and subject distance) work together in any shooting situation.

“Specifically, suppose you try to take a picture with an aperture of f/5.6. At a given distance from your subject, and at a given focal length, that f/stop will yield a certain depth of field. But what happens if you change the other two factors? If you get closer to the subject, such as if you walk toward it, or if you increase the focal length by zooming in, the depth of field decreases.
So what is the point of all this? Why do you care about depth of field at all? The answer is that depth of field is an extremely important element in the overall composition of your photographs. Using depth of field, you can isolate your subject by making sure it is the only sharply focused person or object in the frame. Alternately, you can increase depth of field to make the entire image—from foreground to background—as sharp as possible. “

Using zoom lens
Zoom lens allows you to vary the focal length from a wide-angle or normal perspective all the way through some moderate telephoto length. Focal length is just a measure of the magnification that the lens provides. A larger focal length produces greater magnification; hence long focal length lenses are great for capturing fast action or enlarging objects that are moderately far away.

Important to remember is that the focal length of the given lens also affects the camera’s angle of view. Because a telephoto lens magnifies distant objects, it has a very narrow angle of view. As you reduce the magnification and zoom out toward smaller focal lengths, the angle of view likewise increases.

At the extreme end of the scale, for wide-angle lenses, the image is actually shrunk with respect to what the human eye can see. The angle of view becomes extreme, sometimes even greater than 180 degrees. This kind of wide-angle lens is known as a fish-eye lens due to the peculiar effect of the angle of view.
The focal length of your lens has one other important characteristic. Depending upon whether you have your lens set to wide angle, normal, or telephoto, you’ll get a very different depth of field. A telephoto setting yields minimal depth of field, while a wide-angle setting generates a lot of focusing depth.

Maximizing depth of field
The three ways to maximize the depth of field in your image are:
- Use a lens with a short focal length, such as the normal or wide-angle setting on your camera’s zoom.
- Focus on a distant subject. If you’re trying to get both a nearby tree and a more distant house in focus simultaneously, for instance, focusing on the house, rather than the tree, is more likely to deliver both subjects in focus.
- Use the smallest aperture you can, such as f/11 or f/16.
Not surprisingly, you can minimize the depth of field in a picture by doing exactly the opposite of these things.

to be continued

part 2

Photography rules (2)

part1

Move the Horizon
This rule is related to the rule of thirds. If the rule of thirds is followed to the letter, probably this mistake won’t appear.
Probably you have seen photographs in which the horizon is right in the middle of the photograph. Actually, the photographer probably did not make a conscious decision to do this.
Running the horizon right through the middle of a photograph is boring because it violates the rule of thirds. Try putting the horizon along a rule-of-thirds line, that actually gives two choices for where to put the horizon in any picture, in the top third or the bottom third of the composition.
How do you decide which? It’s easy: if you want to emphasize the distant landscape and sky, put the horizon on the bottom third line.


If you are taking a seascape where you want to emphasize the foreground, the horizon belongs in the upper third of the picture. Of course, these are just guidelines so try to experiment.

Use lines, symmetry, and patterns
“Photographs are two-dimensional representations of three-dimensional scenes. The question, then, is how to best lead viewers through a picture so they get a sense of the real depth that the image is trying to depict.
The answer to that question is simpler than you might think. When you compose an image in the viewfinder, look for natural or artificial lines that might lead the viewer’s eyes through the photo. These lines can create a sense of depth and perspective that is often lost in the two-dimensional photograph. Lines can be formed in almost any situation: you might see a row of trees, the shape of a skyscraper from the ground, or the route of the backyard fence.
Personally, I enjoy using the natural flow of a stream or road to lead the eye from one end of the picture to the other. “
Dave Johnson, How to do everything with your digital camera

Another option is to look for repetition and patterns, and incorporate those into the image. Patterns can create interesting effects, they can add a sense of depth to images. Try combining these patterns with a sense of symmetry. When you employ symmetry, you are balancing both sides of the photograph. That can also help lead the eye through your image.

Use foreground to balance the background
When trying to photograph a distant subject (landscape or cityscape) a common trick is to place something of interest in the foreground to provide a sense of balance.
When done well, the viewer’s eyes are drawn immediately to the foreground object, and then they’ll wander to the background. This is an effective technique for adding a sense of depth and perspective to a photograph, as well as giving the foreground a sense of scale.

Every picture tells a story
When you press the shutter release, you’ve should created an image with depth, motion, and some sort of story. When you look at a good image, your eyes should naturally start in one place and move to another. That’s in sharp contrast to a typical snapshot that has no particular story to tell; the focal point is haphazardly placed, and it’s cluttered enough that there’s no obvious path for the eye to take.
Good artists can use techniques like lines, symmetry, patterns, and multiple focal points to lead the viewer in a specific way through an image. If you can create an image like that, consider it a success.

Know when to break the rules of composition*
After you master concepts like the rule of thirds and filling the frame with the focal point, however, you’ll find that you can take even better pictures by bending or breaking those same rules.
This is an area of photography that is best experimented with and learned on your own, but there are a few pointers to help:
- Change the perspective: Technically, this is not breaking any rules of composition, but this is something that few people think about, yet it can have a profound impact on the quality of your photos. Simply put, experiment with different ways to see the same scene. Try taking your picture by holding the camera horizontally, and then see how you might frame the picture by turning the camera vertically. Get low to the ground or stand up on a chair or table to get a higher perspective on the same scene.
You have a lot of options: try them.
- Ignore symmetry: Sure, symmetry is great, but just as often as symmetry works well in a photograph, sometimes you can get an even better image if you intentionally skew the photo to strip out the symmetry. When the viewer expects symmetry and doesn’t get it, you have introduced tension and drama into an image. And that’s not bad, especially if all you’ve done is photograph some road, train track, or river.
- Surprise the viewer: If you’ve seen one landscape, you’ve seen them all. That’s not really true, but it can sometimes seem that way. Go for the unusual by framing your picture in a totally unexpected way. One of my favorite tricks is shooting landscapes through the side view mirror of a car.
- Use several focal points: While most pictures rely on just one or two focal points, sometimes you need even more, especially when you’re shooting a picture like a family portrait. If you’re taking a picture with several people in it, you can often overcome a cluttered look by arranging the subjects into a geometric pattern. If the subjects’ heads form a triangle shape, for instance, you have introduced order into the photo despite the fact that there are a lot of people in it.

* Dave Johnson, How to do everything with your digital camera

To be continued

part1

Photography rules (1)

After many pictures taken without any theory knowledge about photography I decided to start reading books and take notes and see were and why I have failed taking good pictures.

I will begin my first series of “how to take pictures”, trying to share what I have learned.

What does it take to take a good picture? For sure, it requires more than a solid knowledge of camera’s various controls and settings. If that were all that is needed, anyone who had read a camera manual could be a great photographer, including me.
Unfortunately, taking good pictures demands creativity and a touch of artistry along a solid understanding of the rules of photographic composition and practical experience of when it’s okay to break the rules.


Photography composition

Composition is all about arranging the subjects in a picture and the ability to translate into a photo what is in your mind’s eye. The camera “sees” things very differently, and in order to take great photographs one must have to understand and learn how to see the world the way camera “sees” it.
Only through an understanding of composition the images will go from snapshots to potential works of art.

Why composition is so important?
All of us have been on vacation, seeing a picturesque view, pulled out the camera, and then been disappointed with the final results.

There are some reasons why what the camera “sees” is different from what our eyes see.
Our eyes aren’t just some lens and integrated circuits, all that we see is enhanced and interpreted by our brain and some of the beauty of the scene is added by our mind. Unfortunately, what we see in the viewfinder is what we get, without any enhancing.

A good example of how the eye sees different than the camera. The sky in my mind was a nice blue and the reflexion was not so obvious, I could barely notice it.



Rules of composition

Isolate the focal point
The focal point is the main point of interest that the viewer’s eye is drawn to when looking at one picture.
Always must be determined who or what is actually the focal point of the picture then the photo must be planed accordingly. Usually the single biggest problem with photographs taken by new photographers is that they fail to consider what their subject actually is. When you don’t know what you’re taking a picture of, it’s hard to emphasize that element in the final composition. That leads to muddy, confused arrangements in which there is nothing specific for the viewer to look at.
When the subject is too expansive to be considered a focal point then is recommended to add a secondary focal point.

As a general rule, is wanted a single focal point in the photograph. More than one main subject is distracting, and viewers won’t really know where to look. If you see a photograph in which several objects have equal visual weight, you probably won’t like it, even though you may not be sure why. It is certainly possible to include multiple focal points in an image, but this should be done with care.

Rule of thirds
The rule of thirds is the single most important rule of photography that must be learned and applied.

“Here’s what you should do: in your mind, draw two horizontal and two vertical lines through your viewfinder so that you have divided each plane—the horizontal and the vertical—into thirds. In other words, your image should be broken into nine zones with four interior corners where the lines intersect. It is these corners that constitute the “sweet spots” in your picture. If you place something—typically the focal point—in any of these intersections, you’ll typically end up with an interesting composition.
This really, really is the golden rule of photography. Thumb through a magazine. Open a photography book. Watch a movie. No matter where you look, you will find that professional photographers follow the rule of thirds about 75 percent of the time. And while the rule of thirds is very easy to do, you may find that it is somewhat counterintuitive. “

Dave Johnson, How to do everything with your digital camera

Many people, including me at the beginning, try to put the focal point of their picture dead smack in the middle of the frame.
And the experts are telling that “there are few things in life more boring than looking at a picture in which the subject is always right in the middle”. Fortunately, for many of us, some of the new cameras have the option to display the grid so you are not challenged to draw lines in your mind.

Fill the frame
Essentially, this rule says that the amount of dead space in a photograph should be minimized. Once the focal point of the image is decided there’s absolutely no reason to place it to a small portion of the picture. Get closer, use the zoom , walk over to it! Whatever is needed to do, do it, in order to keep the focal point from being a small part of the overall image.

to be continued

part2