Taking a photograph isn't merely about pressing the shutter button. Aside from the technical considerations like exposure, there are things like composition and timing that are equally important to consider. Different genres of photography may require you to have certain knowledge specific to those genres, but there are some things every serious photographer should have an understanding of when it comes to the fundamentals.
This post attempts to take a look at fifteen such points that every photographer can benefit from, especially those starting out in photography. A practical understanding of them will enable you to be better prepared when you're out photographing and be more confident in your photography. We are sure there could be other additions to the list but this should serve as a good place to start. Most of these tips are going to be useful if you have a camera that allows manual control over the picture taking process.
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1. How to keep the camera steady
Keeping the camera steady is essential to capturing sharp photos. When shooting handheld, it's important to know how to hold the camera properly to avoid shake: by tucking your elbows in, breathing out when taking a photo, and using a wall or a surface to create support when needed.
As a rule of thumb when photographing handheld, the shutter speed should not be slower than ‘1/Focal Length' to avoid blur from camera shake (e.g., 1/100s at 100mm focal length). Of course, ‘image stabilization' in your camera lets you use a shutter speed slower than that. Use a tripod when the shutter speed is going to be too slow to be shot handheld.
2. The various tools of composition that you can use
There are a lot of composition guidelines that exist to help you compose your photos better. Of course you can break the ‘rules' after you've learned them but when starting out, it helps to utilize these tools. Rule of thirds, leading lines, symmetry, juxtaposition, and negative space are some of the composition tools, to name a few.
Perspective, timing, and knowing what to include and what to leave out of the frame are all important factors to consider before you press the shutter button. To learn more about the different tools of composition, check out this post, and the article here.
3. The exposure triangle
The triad of aperture, shutter speed and ISO are the core settings that determine the image exposure on the camera sensor after you press the shutter release button. Aperture controls the amount of light passing through the lens, shutter speed is the length of time for which the sensor remains open to light, and ISO is the sensitivity of the sensor. Learn more about it here.
These settings are adjusted according to the lighting situation or image requirements. A step change in each of these settings is measured in stops, with each stop essentially changing the amount of light captured by a factor of two (doubling or halving). To know more about stops, read the post here.
4. Metering modes and exposure compensation
Metering refers to the process of measuring the light from a scene you wish to photograph, using one of the different metering modes on the camera, to get settings of aperture, shutter speed and ISO (exposure triangle from #3 above. You then use these settings suggested by your camera to get the desired exposure in your photograph. There are various metering modes available – evaluative, center-weighted and spot. Read more about it here.
Exposure compensation allows you to incrementally change the exposure around the default settings suggested by the camera after metering the scene. Exposure compensation is usually needed when there are excessive bright or dark regions in a scene. Dialing in an exposure compensation corrects the exposure according to your requirement. Read the post here to learn more about it.
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5. Camera settings to capture sharp photos
Unless you want to intentionally capture blur, you are looking to capture the sharpest image possible. Image sharpness is affected by various factors and can be improved by: choosing a mid-level aperture(e.g. (f/5.8 to f/8 or f/11), minding the ISO along with a fast enough shutter speed when handholding the camera, achieving the right focus, and keeping the camera steady when shooting. The article here discusses all the points in detail.
6. How aperture affects the depth of field (capturing background blur)
The aperture setting controls the size of the diaphragm that determines how much light enters the camera when you take a photograph. This also affects the depth of field (DoF)- the region of acceptable focus in an image. Smaller aperture (higher f-number, e.g. f/11) provides a wider depth of field than a larger aperture (smaller f-number, e.g. f/2.8). However, there are other factors too that affect the DoF, like the subject to camera distance and the focal length at which you're photographing.
All these factors come into play when you want to capture background blur, also called bokeh. Shooting close to the subject, using a wide aperture, and photographing at a long focal length can help you capture a good background blur. Check out the post here to learn more about depth of field.
7. How shutter speed affects capturing motion
When you use a slow shutter speed, any motion happening in the frame gets captured as blur (or trail) from the moving object. Likewise, any camera movement also blurs the whole frame. Therefore, it becomes necessary to use a tripod when photographing long exposures. A fast shutter speed, on the other hand, freezes motion. Check out this post to see how you can use slow shutter speed creatively.
8. How white balance impacts the colors in your photo
The color of the light impacts the way your photographs look. The White Balance setting can help you adjust for the varying light conditions and take care of color casts, if any. It can be adjusted in-camera while capturing the shot, or you can change it in post-processing if you photograph in raw.
White balance can also be used creatively. You can add warmth or coolness to your images by using an appropriate color temperature for such an effect. For example, a ‘Cloudy' or ‘Shade' white balance setting when shooting in daylight can make your images look warmer. Read more about it here.
(Note: To learn and master photography on the go, take a look at Photzy's unique and bestselling photographic training method called Snap Cards– 44 printable photography lessons that you can take with you anywhere. Check it out here.)
9. The use of different auto-focus modes on your camera
Auto-focus helps you achieve sharp focus in your photographs. There are two main auto-focus (AF) modes that your camera has- 1. Single-Servo AF, useful when photographing stationary objects, and 2. Continuous-Servo AF, used when photographing fast moving objects. A third auto-focus mode called Auto-Servo AF lets the camera decide which of the two AF modes to select.
Auto-focus might struggle to function properly in low light conditions, or when there's lack of local contrast at the point where you want to focus. Learn more about the different AF modes here.
10. The different shooting modes on your camera
While manual mode allows you maximum control over the photographic process, the other shooting modes can also be quite useful in various situations. Aperture Priority and Shutter Priority are two automatic modes that allow you the option to control aperture and shutter speed respectively, and the other of the two settings is set automatically based on the scene's metering and the ISO selected. Program mode can be useful when you don't want to spend time tinkering with the settings and quickly want to capture a shot.
Many advanced cameras provide you the option to capture a photograph in raw format, an unprocessed image format that has uncompressed data when compared to the jpeg format. Raw files therefore have more colors and dynamic range, which helps during post-processing as you have more data to work with.
Due to the amount of data contained in it, raw files are larger in size than the corresponding Jpeg, which may be a consideration when deciding which format to choose when shooting. To learn more about the advantages and limitations of shooting raw, check out the article here.
12. Using the histogram to evaluate an exposure
Histogram is a graphical representation of the number of pixels of each shade of gray in a photograph. It is used to check the exposure in a photo and to make necessary adjustments to the camera settings. A good exposure is one that contains detail in the darkest and the brightest regions of the photo, and is commonly depicted by a bell shaped histogram. A histogram lets you see if any highlight or shadow clipping has occurred in the image, i.e. whether there are areas that are completely white or black, thereby lacking any detail.
A photograph that has predominantly dark areas like the one above has a histogram that's skewed to the left. Photo by Giuseppe Milo
(Note: To learn and master photography on the go, take a look at Photzy's unique and bestselling photographic training method called Snap Cards– 44 printable photography lessons that you can take with you anywhere. Check it out here.)
13. Utilizing fill-in light to illuminate shadows
Fill-in light is used when you want to illuminate the shadows on a subject. It can be used when shooting back-lit subjects, or just to reduce the harshness of other light sources. You can use the pop-up flash on your camera (or a dedicated flash unit) for fill-in flash, or even bounce light off a large reflector to brighten the shadow regions. Read the post here to learn more about how to use fill light for portraits.
Noise is the visible, grainy look in your image that can arise out of various factors. Shooting at a high ISO, long exposures and careless editing can all contribute towards image noise, among other reasons. No matter how much you avoid it, noise can still creep into an image. There are different ways you can reduce noise in post-processing to improve the quality of the photograph. Check out the post here to learn more.
It often happens that you shoot something and later when you review the image, you realize that you missed the moment by a whisker, or maybe the settings weren't right. To minimize this risk, shoot in the burst mode to capture more frames so you can select the keepers later. Shooting in raw (#11 above) and using exposure bracketing when you are uncertain about the exposure also helps you in accomplishing the shot.
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Ritesh has been photographing since 2010 and his photographic interests have varied from nature and landscapes to street photography. You can see his photography on Flickr or on his website.
