Over the summer I have decided to work on my photography skills. I would like to have more understanding to help me take good photographs. I am using a manual camera so that I can learn how to adjust the settings myself, my wonderful boyfriend has taken on the task of teaching me.
This was my first photo, learning to focus and adjust the light with aperture and shutter speed. A wider aperture lets more might in to the camera as does a slower shutter speed.
Close up of a wall, seeing how close I can get to it staying in focus.
It is difficult to get the light right when taking a photo of something against a bright sky with out losing the detail. Here I wanted to capture the leave so set the light right for the leaves meaning the sky is too bright.
Here I wanted the detail of the sky. When I got the light right for the sky the leaves were too dark. It is important to know what you are taking a photo of to get the detail you want to achieve.
In the woods it is dark, adjustments need to be made for this. I need much more light coming in the camera.
In the lens I was using it had a metre to tell me when I have the right amount of light for the photo I am taking. In this one the metre was not correct, when I got the light right for the metre the photo was to dark so I had to adjust the settings and decide for myself how much light I wanted. This was particularly difficult because of the bright sky behind the trees.
To focus in on something and have the background blurry I needed a narrower aperture and to use spot metering. This means I can focus on a particular area.
The light was adjusted in the dark wood to capture the bright green of the leaves above.
Again here the camera was wrong about the amount of light needed. When I set it to the camera suggestions it came out black. I set the aperture first because I wanted the focus on the post, I set as as big a hole as I could then adjusted the shutter as needed.
When taking a photo it is important to decide how much you want in focus. Here I wanted as much in focus as possible so I used the widest aperture I could. I had the post in focus and as much as the background in focus as I could get.