Lesson Three: Master Shutter Speed

Shutter speed is extremely valuable and useful to a photographer no matter if you are extremely experienced or do not have much experience at all.  Adjusting your shutter speed allows you to capture those race cars flying by you at one-hundred fifty plus miles an hour in a clean, vibrant crisp way.  Maybe you want to focus more on the speed of the cars rather than the detail they have.  Shutter speed will help you achieve this as well.  If you wanted to capture these images or any images in a clean precise detailed way then you would adjust your camera to a faster shutter speed.  But on the other hand, if you decided you wanted to focus more on the speed or what was passing by or moving around you then you would want to adjust your camera to use a slower shutter speed.  This will give your picture that blurred motion view.  The slower your shutter speed the more motion and movement is shown within the picture.  Typically however, in everyday life a faster shutter speed is used.  This give you a accurate detailed picture no matter what you are photographing.  This also ties in nicely with last weeks lesson on aperture.  If you have a beautiful flower in the foreground you are taking a photo of but the leave in the back ground are taking away from the flower, then not only can you adjust the aperture along with the shutter speed to get the desired effect but the camera automatically does that for you to a certain point.  The camera naturally uses a larger aperture with a faster shutter speed so you can focus more on the foreground and less on the what’s going on in the background.  Neat huh!  Another great perk to using a faster shutter speed (which really helps me personally out) is that if you do not necessarily have the steadiest hands in the world it is not too big of a problem.  A faster speed tends to help eliminate any kind of blurriness you may receive from shaky hands.      In my first post I talked about a wedding I had photographed.  When I was taking these pictures I was using a faster shutter speed to ensure the pictures were as vibrant, clean, crisp, and detailed as possible.  This also took care of my shaky hands problem.  Granted my hands do not shake to terribly bad in some cases with some cameras it is enough to potentially ruin a picture and that would be a shame.  This also allows you to take series of pictures in a row without having to really pause in between.  At the wedding I took probably a series of 10 or so pictures that included before during and after their kiss.  If you took these photos and put them together you would have like a mini flip book!  Unfortunately I may be a little biased on this subject.  I have really only worked with faster shutter speeds.  I don’t have enough tim using slower shutter speeds to even say I have really experienced them.  So when my camera is working properly or I find a replacement one (whichever comes first)  I will be focusing on taking pictures with a slower shutter speed and getting better acquainted with that so I can accurately decide which I like better! 

Lesson Two: Mastering Aperture

Aperture can really made a big difference in the way a photo turns out.  If you want the viewer to focus on the fore ground then you can adjust the aperture so the back ground is blurred out partially or fully.  If you would like the viewer to focus on the back ground then you an adjust the aperture so the fore ground is also blurred out partially or fully.  This is so helpful in so many real life situations.  For example if you are taking photos of a person and you have the perfect background for them, the light is perfect, colors are wonderful, everything works amazing together but it is a little bit busy then you can adjust the aperture to it is blurred out maybe only a little bit, maybe a lot and then the person you are taking the photos of will become the center focus of the picture.  Another way this would be helpful is if you are a landscape photographer.  Maybe you found the perfect rose to take a picture of but there are a bunch of other ones around it that you do not want in the photo, you adjust your aperture so the one rose you want in the picture is the one in focus and the rest are blurred out and you will be all set.  This will work no matter what you are focusing on, a flower, leave, tree, bug.  It will work well on everything.  In essence you can control what the viewer sees and what you "hide" in a way from them. Another advantage  to doing this is that it will allow you to take more pictures in less time.  Lets say you are a sports photographer and you are taking pictures at a game, whether it is a soccer, football, baseball/softball, basketball, or even a tennis match.  Adjusting you aperture will allow you to take multiple series of photos so you can capture all sorts of action shots and have a wide variety to choose from when it comes time to use them.  If you are at the car races (NASCAR) this setting will also prove to be very helpful.  I have been to races many times, my uncle used to be a driver and even though I do not have any experience using this setting I do know what it is like trying to take pictures of the cars driving by and it becomes so frustrating that eventually you just give up.  If I was old enough to have a camera when he was racing and knew how to use it this well it would have been a much more pleasant photo taking experience!  They say a picture is work a thousand words, but aperture give you a thousand ways to capture that picture.

Unfortunately I am having difficulties uploading my photos at this time but as soon as I get them on here I will post the link to them in a comment.

Lesson One: Master Your Camera

The camera I am using for this assignment is my old digital camera. I am currently waiting for my new phone to arrive. I had gotten this camera when I was around ten years old so it is roughly ten years old now and not very high tech or of good quality.  However that was okay because at the time I was only a little kid and the purpose behind this camera was for me to take silly pictures.  However, there are a few different modes and features of this camera.  First and for most there is a wrist strap attached to the camera so if I was about to drop it ( which I did often) it would not fall to the ground and break it would stay attached to my wrist! Now to the technical modes.  There are only a few of these because as I said this is not a very high tech camera.  First there is a video mode.  This mode I could use to take videos of my friend doing funny stuff, or a concert or whatever I wanted to take a video of rather than a series of pictures.  However, this is only a 1.3 mega pixel camera so taking regular photos posed enough of a challenge let alone videos...this mode did not get a lot of use.  Next is a playback mode.  This mode got a lot of use.  This allowed me to go back through my pictures and videos and make sure they were really something that I wanted to have on my camera.  This camera could only hold roughly 50 photos at one time and I needed to make sure I used those spaces carefully so I had everything I wanted.  Next is just the regular old camera mode.  This was the mode that I used the most often.  I could take all of the pictures I wanted with this mode.  Within this mode there were a few different things I could do.  First of all I have a switch on the side of this camera that allows me to go from taking landscape pictures to portrait pictures.  I did not know anything about the difference between these two modes when I was younger...in fact I did not even know what that switch did until I began doing this assignment.  Next are the flash settings I have.  There are three different ones.  The first one allows me to have the flash go off every time I take a picture.  I did not use this mode very often.  The next flash mode allows me to make it so the flash never goes off and every time I take a picture it is just the outside natural light that is being used.  Finally the mode that I typically left this camera on was the automatic flash mode.  If the camera decided it needed flash then it would automatically go off.  Again because I didn’t know much about taking pictures when I was younger this was just the easiest and automatic setting.  There is also a two time zoom on my camera.  Looking at this now I find it funny because even the camera on my cell phone has a better zoom (and mega pixel for that matter) than this one.  Finally last but not least there is the PC mode.   This mode also got a lot of use.  This is the mode I would switch my camera to and put all of my pictures and videos (if there were any) onto my computer.  Later on as I got older I really liked this mode because it allowed me to upload photos to facebook, myspace, and xanga.  

I have always loved taking pictures.  For as long as I can remember if there was a camera around I volunteered to be the one taking the pictures.  I enjoy watching and waiting for exactly the right moment and capturing it.  A couple summers ago I got to go to a wedding with my friend for her cousin and they asked me to take photos of the ceremony, and the wedding party after and I was ecstatic.  I had a wonderful time taking those photos knowing that whenever they looked at them I was the one who made it possible for them to reflect on those special moments and remember that wonderful day.