How to Take Interesting Photography With Two Settings

The first goal of many beginner photographers is to take clear and sharp pictures. But, once you achieve this goal, you will most likely move into something more creative and different.

Imagine for a minute. If you were taking portrait pictures of your family, your photo album would be full of the same pictures but in different scenes. You will have a picture of uncle Joe in his birthday for this year, uncle Joe's birthday picture from last year, uncle Joe in aunt Jane's birthday, and so on.

I have to say that for your family, this is usually great. It's always nice to see how changes happens every year and how different each event is. But, if you wanted to show it to some friends, it will just look very repetitious to them.

Now, I went over aperture and shutter speed already. You know by now that both controls the amount of lights into the camera. The shutter speed can be changed to blur or freeze actions and movements. And, aperture, can increase or decrease the depth of field.

One thing you should understand that shutter speed and aperture works in tangent. As you increase the shutter speed one setting, you will need to open up your aperture one setting to maintain the same amount of light exposure to your picture. That is, if you take a picture at f/16 aperture using 1/125 shutter speed, you can take the same picture at f/11 using 1/250.

Combining the two controls in different settings can produce very interesting and diffferent pictures with the same digital camera.

Remember, if you want to blur some actions... then, decrease your shutter speed and narrow down your aperture to compensate the amount of light. On the other hand, if you want to freeze the same actions, you will increase your shutter speed and open up your aperture.

If you are also looking at the foreground or background, you can increase or decrease the depth of field. At the same time you can blur or freeze the action to create some visual effects.

Try testing this in a park with birds. Take pictures with the same subject and background and use different shutter speed settings while compensating the aperture settings in your camera. Look at the results. Then, use the same scenario. This time use your aperture settings to increase and decrease the depth of field while compensating the shutter speed settings in your camera.

You will see that you only need to do very little to achieve extraordinary effects by playing around with these two controls. Many savvy photographers have achieved different special effects in their photographs using these two controls. You can do the same.

Again, practice and practice. You will see how easy it is.

David