"Photographer at class, at rest"

Nikon D5000 62mm f22 1/200s ISO100

"Bug in the garden" Nature close-up unpolarized

"Plant burst" Shallow depth of field in nature

"Charlie's eyes" Wide aperture model close-up

"Smoke & mirrors" Light far out of focus looks like smoke

A camera's aperture is analogous to the pupil of your eye - getting bigger to let in more light and smaller to let in less. Aperture is confusing because of the way it is described in F numbers and F stops. An F number is the ratio of the lens focal length to the lens opening diameter, so a larger aperture corresponds to a smaller F number. F stops are standard values of F numbers and seem to be on a weird numbered scale until you dredge up your old geometry formulas and realize that's because they are driven by the area inside of a circle. F 1.4, 2, 2.8, 4, 5.6, 8 etc., are known as "full stop" increments, each representing one half of the light transmitted of the previous one. Aperture is also a driving force of "depth of field", which is the amount of the picture that is in focus in front of and behind the camera's single focus point. A smaller F number means a shallower depth of field and a wider aperture. A larger F number means a deeper depth of field and a narrower aperture. Yes, F numbers and F stops make understanding aperture much more confusing than it ever had to be. For visual examples, the four pictures above were taken with a low F number (wide aperture / shallow depth of field) to blur out everything but the main focal point while the three pictures below were taken with higher F numbers (narrow aperture / deep depth of field) to keep as much of the shot in focus as possible.

"Long neck guitar" Close wide angle perspective

"Talking trees" Ground up perspective

A camera's shutter speed is much easier to understand. Press the button, the shutter opens and a short time later it closes. Using shutter speed to get a great shot is more challenging. A very short shutter speed "freezes" action while a long shutter speed smoothes action. As far as interactions go, given an equal amount of light available, a quicker shutter speed will require a wider aperture and vice versa. Very slow shutter speeds require the use of a tripod because small movements of your hand holding the camera will blur the image. If you have a steady hand, as a rule of thumb any shutter speed slower than 1/(the lens focal length) requires a tripod. So if I'm shooting with a 50mm lens, the slowest shutter speed I can shoot handheld is 1/50 second. Optically stabilized lenses or cameras give handheld shooting a useful lift. The two pictures below, "ASU fountain at night" and "Fountain drips", illustrate the effects of a very long and a short shutter speed. To force a wider aperture for that silky waterfall effect (below left) when the ambient light is high, like mid-day, use a neutral density filter of optical density .9 (ND8) or 1.2 (ND16) that lets in only 12.5% or 6.25% of the light respectively.

"ASU fountain at night" Slow shutter water smoothing

"Fountain drips" Fast shutter water stop action

"Over the pier" Jumping sunset silhouette

"Charlie on white" High key lighting

Getting the right perspective

Perspective is the next hurdle to getting a great shot. Perspective has many elements including framing, running lines out of corners and applying the "rule of thirds". Proper framing is often the difference between a boring shot and an interesting one. In western cultures, our eyes follow pictures the way they read books, from upper left to lower right. We also tend to see the brightest spot in a picture first. A picture that tells an interesting story generally doesn't fight this directional tendency and rarely will have its main subject parked alone in its center. Another very simple perspective method I learned is that if there are straight lines in the frame that run from the near field to the far field, better pictures will run those lines out of the corners. The "rule of thirds" is a simple perspective approach to better place key objects in the shot. Imagine a stretched tic-tac-toe board superimposed over the shot dividing the frame into thirds in vertical and horizontal directions. Major lines of the subject should be along any of those those tic-tac-toe lines and major points should be at their intersection.

Perspective is also effected by lens type. A simple way to think about it is that given the same distance from a subject, a wide angle lens will exaggerate distances between subject elements while a telephoto lens will compress them. "Long neck guitar" and "Talking trees" shots earlier on this page illustrate using a wide angle lens to exaggerate subject distance, while "Over the pier" above illustrates compressing subject distances together. A common wide angle lens mistake is to use its wide angle trying to get more into the frame. Wide angle lenses are much better applied to getting very close to a subject, including the rest of the picture in perspective to it. There's much more to perspective, but following just these basic concepts makes a significant difference.

Going into the light

Playing with light is a photographer's game. The first picture above is called a jumping sunset silhouette, demonstrating that even at sunset as ambient light fades, a quick shutter and a ground up perspective can freeze a subject and give an interesting effect. I took this shot, "Over the pier", laying on the sand pointing the camera up with my model about 20 feet away jumping up about 18 inches. High key lighting is a lighting effect where subject and space are defined by the lack of light rather than its presence. The second picture above, "Charlie on white" defines Charlie (my Great Pyrenees) only by his black nose, eyes and lips. At the opposite end of high key lighting is mood lighting where only part of the subject is lit and shadows are long. "Leo's evil eye" below lights only a part of Leo's (my Borzoi) body and the reflection in his left eye from the candles sets the eerie overall tone. Panning is a technique where the camera is moving at the speed of a subject to freeze their motion but blur everything else. In "Paws in the action" below, Charlie is moving at the same speed that I'm turning the camera, while Leo is running faster and the ground is stationary. Notice that both dogs have only two paws on the ground, further conveying the feeling of speed. A simple trick I learned in panning is to make sure to keep the camera moving while pressing the shutter release.

"Leo's evil eye" Mood lighting

"Paws in the action" Panning

Working with models

A fascinating part of my photography class almost every week is to set-up and do amateur model shoots. I learned a lot about establishing and keeping the rhythm of the shoot going. Models do what you tell them or show them to do, otherwise they just stand there looking at you. I learned to be prepared by getting the all the lights, backgrounds and camera settings done first and then to build a rapport with the model before starting the shoot. My model shots below of Jenna, Jaclyn, Katie, Jurgen, Tony, Pirate, Jamie, Hanna, Elizabeth and Sunny covered a wide variety of subjects and types of direction needed. With models, technical accuracy can still result in boring shots unless the pose also captures the essence of who they are. The confident serenity that works for Tony the biker would be terrible for exuberant Jenna the 5 year old. Jaclyn the rocker girl has "attitude" while Katie and Jamie are elegant and stylish. For Elizabeth, I emphasized her distinctive ethnicity. For Hanna, I brought out her youth and for Sunny, her maturity and golfer persona.

"Jenna flies" White background

"Jaclyn kneels" White background

"Katie flips" White background

"Jaclyn's attitude" White background

"Katie spins" Black background

"Jurgen blows" White background

"Tony serene" Black background

"Pirate stands" Grey background

"Jamie laid back" Black background, Fresnel strobe

"Wavy Jamie" Black background, Fresnel strobe

"Elizabeth close-up" White seamless background

"Elizabeth's look" Black background

"Hanna's smile" Grey crush background

 "Sunny's toss" Black backlight background

Taking your temperature

Light has a "temperature" measured in Kelvin which is used in camera white balance. Morning light and evening light are generally more flattering to subjects than mid-day light. Artificial lights each have their own color temperature. The camera's auto white balance will do its best to adjust for the incoming light, but can be easily fooled, casting a colored shade over the subject. This is often apparent in overly pink or brown flesh tones. The table below right shows some of the more common color temperatures. A grey card can be used to fix white balance problems either in the camera or more easily in post-processing. A grey card is simply a card with a neutral grey printed on it that serves as the standard for white balance. Once you know or have set-up what the light will be for what you're shooting, take a picture of a grey card at the exact point where the subject will be. In the first picture below I asked Katie to hold my portable Opteka grey card while we were goofing around before the session. Using the grey card picture in Photoshop during post-processing, I color corrected all of the shots from that background and lighting set-up.