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Welcome to my blog. I hope you will enjoy and learn from the many anecdotes, images, tips and recommendations that I offer from my experiences. If there's anything you'd like to share after reading or if you have a request for future blogs I would love to hear from you. Thank you for joining me in this adventure.
Creative use of shutter speedMost people appreciate a photograph with a peak moment frozen in time with every detail crisp and able to be studied at length. But what what happens when we allow movement into our images by using slower shutter speeds? Once again, as a creative photographer, the choice is yours to make. While shutter speed is one of the three necessary elements to be adjusted along with aperture and ISO for a proper exposure there is far more that to consider if you’re to make the best use of your camera to create the memorable images you crave. Let’s not get too technical While there are many technical factors to be considered when choosing a shutter speed I am not going to go into any of it in-depth here. Shutter speed is simply the amount of time, measured in fractions of seconds [or whole seconds] during which the mechanical or electronic shutter of your camera is opened, allowing light to pass through the aperture of the lens to strike the camera’s film plane or image sensor. You need to understand that your choice of shutter speed will be dependant upon the speed of movement of your subject, the focal length of your lens, the stability of your shooting platform, and the artistic effect you hope to achieve. Simply put, to freeze peak action you need to choose fast shutter speeds - in the 1/500 sec range and higher - while still lifes or slower moving subjects can easily be photographed with slow shutter speeds as long as you are able to steady yourself appropriately. The general rule of thumb is that 1/60 sec is the minimum shutter speed for handheld photography, although with practice many photographers are able to shoot much, much slower than this. Freeze the Moment Assuming you have a suitable lens, decent light, and an interesting subject you should have no problem photographing peak action and keeping your image sharp, both in terms of focus and motion blur. This is where you may need to increase ISO in order to get the fastest shutter speeds possible. If you need your shutter speeds to be higher and you must sacrifice a small amount of image quality by boosting your ISO then do so.
Motion Blur Don’t think for a moment that you cannot shoot action if you don’t have the best equipment or the light available to you is poor. This is where you can use your imagination to use shutter speed in some creative ways. Many photographers allow a certain amount of motion blur into their images on purpose, creating very dynamic photographs that bring life to the subject matter. If you’re using slow shutter speeds in this manner you may need to brace yourself depending on how much of your image you want sharp. Motion is relative The other creative method for incorporating slow shutter speeds into your work is called panning. Panning the method of matching the speed of your subject as it moves with the movement of your lens. Since motion is relative you can essentially eliminate movement in portions of your frame by equalling the movement of your subject during a slower exposure. Since your camera and lens will now be moving “relative to” the background this is where the motion will now appear. Panning takes practice and getting an image is often the result of trial and error. The shutter speed at which you can pan is heavily dependant on the speed of your subject and how smooth you can pan with them. Objects moving in one direction perpendicular to you are more easily panned that those that are changing their position on two planes relative to you.
Knowing how you can be creative with shutter speed will help you to prioritize your settings and help you to simplify the entire photographic process. Go shoot, experiment, and don’t be discouraged by the amount of images that don’t work. You only need one gem from your series to shine.
Creative Use of ApertureAs a photographer your creativity weighs heavily on an understanding of aperture and shutter speed (in combination with ISO) that goes far beyond proper exposure. There are very good reasons for choosing one setting or another which forms the basis for the decision-making I wrote about last week. This week we take a closer look at aperture. Every photographic exposure is based upon the exposure triangle. The three elements of the exposure triangle, ISO, shutter speed, and aperture need to be set in combination to achieve an appropriate exposure. The rule of equivalent exposures states that if you change any of these variables you must change one or both of the others to achieve the same exposure you started with. So how then do you decide where to begin?
Artistic impact Understanding the artistic impact that aperture has on your images will allow you to make critical decisions to produce the images you have in mind from any particular scene. The ability to manipulate aperture (and shutter speed) is what differentiates a person who records a given scene and the person who is actively makes a memorable photograph from it. Aperture, which is measured in f-stops, is the physical opening of the iris or diaphragm of the lens. Just as the iris of your eye adjusts itself according to the level of light available a photographer is able to open and close the aperture of the lens. Aperture is measured in f-stops and the terms “open up” or “stop down” are most often used to describe the process of changing your f-stop to open up or stop down the opening of the lens. The mathematics behind the f-numbers requires more space than I have here but you should understand that they generally range from f2.0 to f32. What you need to know is that the lower f-number, f2.0 is a very wide open aperture that allows a lot of light while f32 is a very small aperture which allows a much smaller amount of light to pass through the lens during a given time frame. Shallow Depth-of-Field The aperture you choose impacts the depth-of-field (DOF) of your image or the area of acceptable sharpness before and beyond your point of focus. Many portrait and documentary photographers today choose to work with the lower f-numbers (shallow DOF) which helps to separate your subject from the background. Lenses with large apertures like f1.2 and f1.4 have become very popular despite their higher price tag. The aesthetic quality of the blur in out-of-focus areas in an image, known as bokeh, has become quite popular with amateurs and professionals alike. The use of very shallow depth-of-field not only separates your subject from the background but the out-of-focus areas themselves very much help make the image unique. At the other end of the spectrum landscape photographers and those using long-exposure techniques (a topic for another blog) choose to work with their lenses stopped down to their smallest openings, usually f22 or f32. This allows them to have sharp, crisp detail in their foreground elements as well as distant objects. If you understand depth-of-field and how to control it you can then prioritize your aperture setting to give you the look you desire. You have now taken control of your settings and once again the complicated exposure triangle has been reduced to a single element. Because your ISO will likely be the first thing you set at any given shoot there remains only shutter speed to be adjusted to find your perfect exposure and give you the artistic effect you’re looking for. With this knowledge your imagination and creativity can more readily be applied to the technical decisions needed to elevate the quality of your images. I encourage you to get out with your camera, experiment a little, make mistakes, and learn from all of them.
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