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ART OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Before we discuss anything else, I want the readers to remember:

Your work is your own and always keep your answer for the below question closer to your heart .

WHY DO YOU PURSUE PHOTOGRAPHY?

Everyone have their own answers and I want readers to answer it yourself and remember it every time you think about a camera or touch it.

Why Photography is an art?

There is no right or wrong way to it. Artist determines their art based on their emotions, their experience and their capability of creating it.

With that said, there can be a good and bad arts or photos. Any photos that trigger emotions or a memory or tell a story are typically good photos.

Some of my work

Please DONOT attempt to download these photos as they are severely downsized. If you want to take a closer look, you can check them out here or in my Instagram account.

If you wish to support us, you can purchase our photos or support us using any of the links from the footer.

Why Photography?

It is a rhetorical question, yet everyone should find their answer to it and remember the answer every time you take photos.

For me, photography is a way of documenting my life through my eyes. This world is so beautiful and I want to capture it the way I see it and perhaps make it even more beautiful through my tools.

I remember the story of every single photo I’ve shot over the past 12 years and I travel through time into the past to those events. I desire to take the viewers of my photos back in time with me and to have the same experience as me when I shot my photos.

I strive to achieve it every single time I touch my camera. I perhaps am creating portals in my timeline every time I click the shutter button.

This is what Photography is for me and with this perspective, lets continue to learn photography.

MOTIVATION

WHAT MOTIVATES ME TO PHOTOGRAPH?

For me Photography is one of my creative out where I find myself at bliss. Traveling places, photographing and vlogging them are my favorite activities next to spending time with my partner.

I feel that when I leave this world, what’s left will be my work and what I offered back to the community.

Find what motivates you to photograph

For some, the motivation could be money. By being a events, sports, wedding, real estate, product photographers, etc., could make money in regular intervals.

For some, it could be passion. We often take a liking to what we see and tend to remember them through photos.

For some, it is both – either passion to job or job and passion. Either way, I call them the PROFESSIONALS who are successfully following their passion which in turn makes them money and allows them to develop their passion.

Regardless of what your motivations are, there are key basics that any photographer needs to understand to get good results. That is what we will be discussing in the next sections.

DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPHY ELEMENTS

We shall take a Goal / Output Oriented Approach to learn photography. To understand further, lets exercise our visuals a bit.

What do you 1st notice in this photo?

How about now?

Play with slider to compare what attracts you into the image?

In both cases, light and color are the factors that 1st draws your attention.

Let us take this other example.

What do you 1st notice in this photo?

How about now?

Play with slider to compare what attracts you into the image?

Now that you have a chance to look at these pictures, let me ask you to be critical about these pictures and think about your likes and dislikes about them.

As you see the importance of each of these points to form a good photo, lets get started with the elements of photography – conceptually with examples .

EXPOSURE

Exposure

Light is the key for photography. But too much light or too little light isn’t good for photos.

Photos can be overexposed, optimally exposed and underexposed. Here are a few more examples.

• Good Exposure
• Over Exposed
• Under Exposed

How Digital Photography Work?

Light is directed to the sensor element of the camera through the lens. Lens is a combination of glasses that gives the required perspective of the photographer. Notice that Aperture residing in the lens and the Sensor and Shutter resides in the camera.

With these sensor perceived light and color values, digital camera meters light and assigns EV value to it. Lower the light on the sensor, lower will be the EV value. Higher the light, higher EV value.

Now that said, it is time to define the elements that control different aspects of photography that every photographer need to understand. Especially, exposure is controlled by 3 major elements called EXPOSURE TRIANGLE.

EXPOSURE TRIANGLE – ISO, Aperture & Shutter Speed. They have more implications than just controlling exposure. Let’s look into in now.

ISO

Sensor consists of photo sensitive elements called pixels arranged in a manner to provide the reading of amount of light and the color values to the processor. The sensitivity of the sensor is called the ISO which is the voltage provided to the sensor to sense the light.

Even so, when the ISO is increased (voltage is increased), the photo sensitive pixels tend to add noise to image.

Photographers understand ISO as one of the arm that control the exposure.

Lower the ISO, Lower will be the noise (ISO Noise) in the image.

• ISO25600
• ISO12800
• ISO6400
• ISO3200
• ISO1600
• ISO800
• ISO400
• ISO200
• ISO100
• ISO50

Notice noise in the background, it will lower as the ISO number reduces.

Aperture

Aperture is maximum opening of the lens. For photography lens, it is measured in F stops while for Cine lenses, it is measured in T stops. I wouldn’t go too deep for this post purpose but for the sake of understanding, F number or F stop refers to aperture opening.

Examples of F numbers: F/2.8, F/4, F/5.6, etc.

Wide open refers to the smallest number in the aperture. Example: F/2.8 means the lens can open up to F/2.8. The opposite refers to the closing aperture. Example: F/16 means the opening hole is small.

Aperture also affects the depth of field – the plane of focus.

Aperture also introduces other lens defects in extreme F-stop values. It will be discussed in the lens section.

Lower the F-stop, higher subject separation, shallower depth of field, lets in a lot of light. Example: F/1.8

Higher the F-stop, lower is the subject separation, wider depth of field, lets in very little light. Example: F/22

• F/2.8
• F/4
• F/5.6
• F/8
• F/11
• F/16
• F/22

Notice the background coming into focus as aperture is reduced.

Shutter Speed

Shutter Speed is the amount of time the sensor is exposed to the light. There are mainly 2 types of shutter – Electronic and Mechanical. Both does the same job of exposing the light depending on the set shutter speed value.

Shutter speed is measured in terms of seconds. Example: 1/125 means, 1/125th of a second.

Shutter speed does 2 functions. Helps exposing the image correctly and freeze subjects.

Faster the Shutter Speed, less is the light on the sensor, subject is frozen – Used in sports, events, any moving subjects, etc.

Slower the Shutter Speed, more in the light on the sensor, smooth subject movement with trails – Used for long exposure shots, astrophotography, etc.

• 1/8000
• 1/4000
• 1/2000
• 1/1000
• 1/500
• 1/250
• 1/125

Notice the fan blurring as the shutter speed is lowered.

COLOR

Apart from the color information gathered by the sensor, the way the processor perceives the color information is relative to the White Balance (WB) values. Playing with WB values are extremely critical, once the image contains wrong WB values, it will be very difficult to get back real color information.

WB is measured in Kelvin (K). Grey card is used to set WB for each scene.

Higher the WB value, warmer is the image.

Lower the WB value, cooler is the image.

• 2500K
• 3000K
• 4000K
• 5000K
• 6000K
• 7000K
• 8000K
• 9000K
• 9900K

Notice there is almost no blue color information in the photo shot at 9900k.

The output also depends on the picture profile of the camera. We will discuss in the camera section.

COMPOSITION

Composing for light & Composing for subject.

How to draw attention to the subject in any photo?

When we look at any photo, our eyes are drawn to where that 1 differentiating point from the light to the darkness or the dark to brighter region is.

For instance, consider these Images.

Same is the logic to draw attention to the subject of the photograph.

• Image 1
• Image 2

Composing for subject

Leading Lines

Rule Of Thirds

Symmetric

Contrast

There are several other composition technique. Just google it to find examples and try to recreate them.

FOCUS

After getting the exposure, white balance and composition correct, if you can’t get the subject in focus, then the photo is worthless. So, make sure that the subject is in focus.

Play with slider to compare what attracts you into the image?

FILE FORMATS

No matter how many techniques we use to shoot photos, if the recording format and size are not correct, then it photo will be ruined. Predominantly, there are three photo recording option in most cameras.

RAW, JPG, HEIF

Elaborate video on RAW vs JPG in A6700

Here, the potential to edit an already processed 8-bit JPG file will not provide as much flexibility as the 14-bit RAW file does.

Exporting in incorrect formats will also take a hit on the image quality.

If you are happy with the JPG images, you are good. But if you aren’t happy with the JPG images, then you will need to shoot in raw and edit in software like Lightroom.