Essential Tips to Excel in Photography

Whether you practice photography as a profession or as a hobby, you would be able to get the maximum out of photography only if you understand how photography works. You should have thorough knowledge of aperture, sensitivity, shutter speed, and focal length to take great looking shots. The following tips should help all amateur and professional photographers equally.

• The first element that a photographer should know is aperture. The aperture is the opening of the lens to allow adequate light to the sensor or the film in the camera. If the aperture is wider, more light passes through the lens. The aperture size gets regulated by the fins that encroach from the edges of the barrel of the lens. If large amounts of fins encroach into the barrel, you obtain a narrow opening like f/16, f/18, etc. Smaller numbers like f/3.2, f/2.8, etc. means a wide opening, with only smaller amounts of the fins obscuring the light.

• When you change the aperture, it has a dramatic impact on the quantity of the light that enters the camera. You should not use aperture as a method to compensate poor lighting. When you shoot landscapes with narrower apertures like f/22, you have to increase the exposure time. You should use a tripod for such shots to avoid any blur in motion due to shaking of your hand.

• Wider apertures like f/1.8 are very good for portrait photography, since it brings the subject in sharp focus, while blurring everything else.

• If you shoot with a prime lens of fixed focal length, you would get sharper and cleaner results. You have to measure lenses of the cameras by their focal lengths. A short focal length like 24 mm does not provide you with high levels of magnification. On the other hand, a long focal length like 240 mm offers high magnification levels.

• The most aesthetically pleasing shots are usually aligned with one-third points in each frame. You should position horizons either one-third down or one-third up the height of the object which you wish to highlight. If you are taking a head shot that fills the frame, the eyes should be one-third down in the shot from the top of the total frame.

• If the scene which you wish to photograph is too big and you are unable to get close, you should focus on the most important detail that you wish to highlight.

• You should use slow shutter speeds such as 1/125 second or lower to photograph fast moving images like automobile races, horse races, etc. This would keep the main subjects in sharp focus while blurring the backgrounds.