The last of the three basic photography principles is ISO and that's what we'll be going over today.  And the good news is that it's super easy to understand.  And to make it even better, besides just applying to DSLRs, a lot of point and shoot cameras have adjustable ISO settings too! Your ISO setting determines how fast your digital sensor "picks up" the light coming into the camera, and works in combination with aperture and shutter speed to determine your exposure.  It's a carry-over … [Read more...]

  I hope you've been having fun experimenting with aperture!  Now we'll be getting familiar with shutter speed.  Most of this is applicable to SLR cameras, but I'll also clue let you know how it relates to point and shoot cameras too! Shutter speed works in combination with the aperture and ISO to determine how much light is entering your camera.  I like to think of the shutter as a tiny set of sliding doors inside the camera that slide apart and then come together again.  Shutter … [Read more...]

  To truly understand photography, you only need to understand a few basic principles.  First and foremost is that photos are created by light.  Traditionally it was light hitting film, but these days it's mostly light hitting a digital sensor.  The Greek root of the word "photography" literally means "writing with light".  So everything we are going over today will be dealing with how that light enters your camera.  The amount of light entering your camera is referred to as … [Read more...]

Hello there and Happy New Year!  Here's to a wonderful year full of great photography!  Now, let's talk cropping ratios and dimensions!  You will find this post extremely useful if you ever plan to enlarge your photos.  Think of wide-screen movies versus full-screen movies.  The wide-screen ratio is more narrow from top to bottom and wide from side to side.  The full-screen ratio is a bit taller, but not as wide.  Similar differences exist in standard photo sizes. Pretty much any … [Read more...]