Week 3 -- The Exposure Triangle

You will hear ALOT about exposure once you devlve into the world of photography.  Exposure has many different meanings. You can use it to compliment a person on how great their photo that they took -- "Great Exposure!!" You can use it to say how long your photo was exposed for (how long the shutter was openned for). 

The exposure Triangle is the relationship between ISO, Shutter Speed & Aperture.  A really great book about this topic is written by Bryan Peterson -- Understanding Exposure and talks in length about how these three different items all help with photography.  If you don't have your ISO, Shutter Speed & Aperture correct you can either end up with Underexpose or Overexpose your photos.  In Bryan Peterson book he talks alot about how you can have lots of techanically correct exposures BUT one creatively correct exposure.   By that he means that you can have everything perfect your ISO totally lined up, your shutterspeed just right and the perfect aperture and it will be a great picture BUT is it telling the story that you wanted it to be.  Is the background in complete focus or is it slightly blurry (changing the aperture)?  Is the the person or thing that you are taking a picture of is it completely stopped or is it showing motion?

Here is your challenge for the week.  Play with your camera....try to play with your camera, change your ISO, your shutter speed & your aperture. See how things change.  Try taking pictures of a moving object and see what tells the story the best (adjusting your shutter speed)! If you don't want to do that  try taking pictures where you can either have the main subject completely in focus with the background out of focus (good bokeh) or have the background and foreground be completely in focuses (adjusting your aperture).  More explainations will be coming in the next weeks about what ISO, Aperture & Shutter Speed does.