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Composition

3/4/2015

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Composition, point and shoot?

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April Issue

Composition, point & shoot?

When you understand good composition, then you know when you can break the rules.

In this edition I hope to teach you some of the standard rules to follow when shooting so you can improve your final outcome. It will be then up to you to work out the best way of breaking these rules so you can come up with some unique ways of shooting a scene.

Now composition for anyone that doesn't know is basically, where things are placed on the final image. Now this is important for landscape photography, but also plays a major role in most other types of photography. Now there are a few different composition techniques, but the one that I have always used, and is probably the most common, is the Rule of Thirds. Basically what this rule states is when you look through your cameras lens you divide the image into one third segment, both horizontally and vertically, as shown in the image below. 

So on the picture above generally, you will decide what is going to be the focal point in your picture, for landscape photography this can be either something on the ground or something in the sky. So if the ground is going to be the main focus of your shot then you would line up the horizon with the top horizontal line. Or if you were shooting something like a sunset, you may have the horizon lined up with the bottom horizontal line. In most cameras these days you can have the option of displaying a grid or not to display a grid. So when you are starting out or practicing having the grid on gives you a good guide. The red dots on the grid above is where it is good to have the main subjects on your photo placed.

So, I never have used a grid to line up my shots, but I always keep this technique in the back of my mind when I take a shot, as you can see from the above photos they are still pretty close.

In the first image of Stonehenge you can see that the horizon is basically in line with the with the bottom horizontal third of the picture. And even though normally someone would take a shot of Stonehenge taking up two thirds of the picture, I like to always take a different perspective. In this example making the clouds and the sky the main focus.
You may go to a place that is a tourist haven, but the way I think about it is, how can I shoot this same object I have seen so many times before in a way that no one else has seen before. This example, you may say, is still a very standard shot, which it is, but if you have ever been to Stonehenge you know that you can not get very close to the structures at all and there are hundreds of people walking a loop path the whole way round. This means you always will have people in the background. But sometimes good composition is also about patience and waiting for that one moment that everyone is hidden behind the structure so it looks as though you are there alone.

In the second image you can see that the boy character is in line with the left third line and the dogs face is on one of the red dots, thus when you look at this image even though most of the subjects are on the left side of the image it still seems well weighted or balanced.

Some times with composition you must try to think outside the box. For example this shot, how many photos have you seen of Uluru? But in this picture of Uluru the main focus is the stark trees in front of Uluru, first you look at them, then your eyes look at what is in the background. Also this is a picture of a landscape, but who says that a landscape shot has to be taken in a landscape format. Thus this image leaves you with some intrigue as to what lays further to the left of this image.

Another technique when composing a picture, is to have some lines or a path that lead the viewers eyes into a shot and therefore making them feel involved in the image. Using this technique you can control where a viewers focus lays.

If you didn't do this then the viewers eyes may wonder around an image and leave them feeling confused as to what the image was supposed to be about. I have provided a few examples of shots that lead your eyes into an image below.

These pictures leave you with a sense of purpose to the image or a story that the image has told you by leading your eyes into an image.

Another technique to consider is to fill the whole frame with your subject, this leaves no doubt in someone's mind as to what the image is supposed to be about. This technique can be used if you are trying to create an image with high impact, because you are putting the subject right in the viewers face. As with this picture below of this old broken bullet ridden train. As you look at this image and get drawn in further you start to see more and more damage it leaves you with a sense of history and thoughts as to what this train has been through.

So I would like to leave you with a few other things to consider when you are composing your images. Firstly, always pay attention to what is in the background of your image. Particularly when you are taking photographs of people. I don't know how many amazing photos I have seen of people where the image is ruined by something in the background. In most cases this could have been avoided by the photographer moving just slightly, to hide the object in the background or so a pole isn't coming out of someone's head in an image. 

Secondly avoid having the main subject of your image directly in the centre of the image, the only time you really need to do this is if you are taking a passport photo.
Lastly don't forget to break the rules. Now don't break all of them at the same time because that is what is called a badly composed photo, but break maybe one or two in a shot, experiment and enjoy trying to create something from a perspective that no one else has thought about doing. 

I hope you have enjoyed this months' topic "Composition, point and shoot?". Please share this with any of your friends you think it may benefit.

And if you have any topics you would like me to cover in future editions of "Photography Tips" please feel free to contact me by any of the means below.

If you have any topics you would like covered, you can contact me either by commenting on my Blog which is on both www.thebooth.com.au and www.brendanfellowsphotography.com or by leaving me a message on one of my Facebook pages https://www.facebook.com/TheBoothSydney or https://www.facebook.com/brendanfellowsphotography . I look forward to hearing from you.

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So, What is ISO?

4/3/2015

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What is ISO?

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March Issue

So, what is ISO?

What is ISO and how do I use it?

So what is ISO? How does it affect my pictures? And how do I use it?

ISO stands for International Standards Organisation, which doesn't really mean or explain much. Basically it relates, once again, back to when people were using film in their cameras. It basically set how sensitive the film was to light. So an ISO 100 film wasn't very sensitive to light, where as an ISO 1600 film was very sensitive to light. In other words if you were using an ISO 100 film and shooting at night, the shutter would have to be open for a long period of time in order to get enough light on to the film. Where as if you had an ISO 1600 film and you were shooting at night, then you more than likely would be able to hand hold the camera. The shutter speed would be much faster because it would collect the light on to the film much faster.

So how does adjusting the ISO affect the final image? In the days of film what would happen, the larger the ISO number the more "noise" or "grain" is visible in the photos. I have put some photos below at different ISO's so you can see what I am talking about. Now in DSLRs they replicate this by adding noise to the final image.

ISO 100

ISO 400

ISO 800

ISO 1600

ISO 6400

As you can see from the images above, there is a major difference between an ISO 100 picture and an ISO 6400 picture.
These days most people are used to looking at perfectly clear photos, mainly due to phone cameras. So you probably say, why would I want a picture that is all grainy and isn't clear. In some cases it may be because you don't have a choice, like in some night photography. You don't want to use a flash because you won't be able to capture the atmosphere if you use a flash and you don't have a tripod and need to hand hold your camera. The main reason I would use an ISO that would give grain to an image is because it can provide a sense of drama or a sense of age to a picture, I find this works best in black & white photography. Below are a couple of grainy photos taken by a couple of photographers who photograph homeless people. you can imagine is these photos were crystal clear then there wouldn't be the sense of drama or roughness about the images.

By Lee Jefferies

By Kenichi Anai

So how does ISO relate to aperture and shutter speed? Well all of these are connected and when one is adjusted the other two will either automatically be adjusted or need to be manually adjusted depending on what setting you are using on your camera. Below is a diagram that will help to explain how these are connected.

As you can see the ISO, aperture and Shutter speed are in each corner of the triangle. The writing in the red indicates the consequences of adjusting any one of these. So with ISO, as explained, the higher the number the more noise or grain in the image. If you don't want grain then you can adjust the shutter speed by slowing it down. But then the slower the shutter speed the more chance there will be of motion blur. And if you don't want grain or motion blur then you can try adjusting the aperture, but then you will loose the depth of field, meaning there will be less in focus in the picture, only the item that you focus on.

So in conclusion, there are a number of ways you can manually adjust your DSLR in order to give you a different effect in your final image. So enjoy experimenting with these and try different adjustments for the same image and see what you can come up with. This is the good thing about owning a DSLR, you can experiment as much as you want and you don't waste money on film.

I hope you have enjoyed this months' topic "So, what is ISO". Please share this with any of your friends you think it may benefit.

And if you have any topics you would like me to cover in future editions of "Photography Tips" please feel free to contact me by any of the means below.

If you have any topics you would like covered, you can contact me either by commenting on my Blog which is on both www.thebooth.com.au and www.brendanfellowsphotography.com or by leaving me a message on one of my Facebook pages https://www.facebook.com/TheBoothSydney or https://www.facebook.com/brendanfellowsphotography . I look forward to hearing from you.

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All about Aperture February Issue

2/2/2015

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What is Aperture and how do I use it?

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February Issue

All about Aperture

What is Aperture and how do I use it?

Funnily enough, this is the question that I get asked the most for advice on, but people who ask don't realise that this is what they are asking for advice on.

So what is aperture? Aperture relates to how far open the iris of you camera is. Now for anyone that isn't sure what is the iris of your camera. It is the part in your lens that controls how much light is let through to your camera body. You can change how far this opens with the aperture setting and this will affect how long the shutter is open, this can also affect the ISO setting (we will look at shutter speed & ISO in future newsletters) You just need to know for now that they are all related to each other.
You can see below how different aperture settings change how far open the iris is. Funnily the smaller the number, the larger the opening in the iris. But I'll explain why shortly.

So how do you use the aperture setting on your camera. On Canon cameras the setting is "AV" on Nikon, Sony and most other cameras it is just "A". When you are looking at your display screen or through your lens it appears on your screen as a f-number, as seen below in the circle.

So why does a smaller number make the hole larger? It is because the number refers to a ratio between the focal distance and the opening diameter of the iris. The way I think of it so I can remember how it works is, at F/1.8 only the first 1.8 meters of the photo is in focus at f/22 the first 22 meters of the photo is in focus (and this isn't how it works but it helps me remember, and the distance I have stated is just to help remember how it works, this is not the actual focal range).

So how does it work? You can think of it this way, close your eyes then open then and close them as quick as you can while looking at the picture to the left. Do you remember much of what you just saw, you maybe know it was a picture of some buildings in Venice, correct.
Ok, now this time just have a good look at the picture. Did you see the couple going for a ride in the gondola last time? So this is kind of how aperture works. Basically when the iris is fully open, like f/1.8 in the image of the lenses above, there is much more light going onto the sensor therefore the camera only opens the shutter for a short period of time,

(assuming the weather is the same as in the picture of Venice above). What this means is, like when you opened and closed your eyes quickly. The camera doesn't have much time to pick up all the details in the background. So only the item that you made the focal point will be in focus, like in a setting of f2.8 on the camera. See Picture 1 below.
But if you choose an aperture like f/22 because this is such a small hole, the shutter must stay open for longer to let the same amount of light in to get the same exposure. Therefore the sensor has a lot longer to collect the light and therefore the details of the objects in the background. As seen in picture 2 below.

f2.8

Picture 1

f22

Picture 2

I hope you have enjoyed this months' topic "All about Aperture". Please share this with any of your friends you think it may benefit.

And if you have any topics you would like me to cover in future editions of "Photography Tips" please feel free to contact me by any of the means below.

If you have any topics you would like covered, you can contact me either by commenting on my Blog which is on both www.thebooth.com.au and www.brendanfellowsphotography.com or by leaving me a message on one of my Facebook pages https://www.facebook.com/TheBoothSydney or https://www.facebook.com/brendanfellowsphotography . I look forward to hearing from you.

Copyright © 2015, Brendan Fellows Photography, All rights reserved.





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Photography Tips, Exposure.

6/1/2015

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How to get the correct exposure in your photos.

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Getting the correct Exposure

What settings to use to improve the exposure levels in your photos.

Whether you use a DSLR or a digital point and shoot camera there are always some slight changes you can make to improve your photos. Hopefully this series of monthly newsletters will help you to get better shots.

Firstly, let me briefly explain exposure. This is not how many followers you have on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. This relates to the amount of light let through your lens onto the sensor and as a result, how light or dark your image may be. See below.

This image has been under exposed. Meaning the lens wasn't open long enough to capture the image.

This image has been over exposed, meaning the lens was open too long and the image has been burnt in too much and therefore data has been lost in the image.

This Image is as close as you could get to a correct exposure. You can still see some of the detail under the bridge, although some parts are too dark, and you can see most of the detail in the clouds, except for a little loss in the centre of the main cloud.

So how do you get the exposure correct? Now there are a few ways, I will cover the one that I mainly use for most circumstances. On your camera you have probably seen the following symbols.

These refer to the metering method your camera will use to determine the exposure. Generally number 4 is the standard or default option. This basically looks at your whole image and determines an average exposure.

I personally like to leave my camera set to number 2.
This setting is what is called spot metering. Where it only will look at the colours directly under that central dot to determine what the exposure will be. Now you must understand what you must point this at to get the best exposure possible.

When cameras were first invented they only shot in Grey scale, or Black & White as it is more commonly termed. And even after all our advances in technology relating to photography, exposure still goes back to how it was done it the Black & White days.

This is how it works, in the black and white days, to get a good exposure you would look to expose something to what is called middle grey, which is basically half way between black and white and depending on your monitor, looks something like this.



 

Now because the vast majority of photos we take are of people, most cameras are set up to look at a persons face or skin and make this middle grey. Also co-incidentally, most green grass on average will give you a middle grey colour if shooting in Black & White.

Now that you know this, how do you use it? Well going back to my pictures above of the cityscape. You will see below I have converted it to black and white.

In this picture you can see that parts of the blue sky and parts of the circled building behind the bridge are roughly a middle grey colour. So for this picture I put my dot on the building and used this as my focus point and metering point as this would work for this image.

How else does this technique work?

If for example, you are taking a picture of a bride in a large beautiful white dress and a groom in a black suit. If you were to use the default metering setting you more than likely will have a photo that is slightly under exposed due to how much white there is in the image. This makes the peoples faces too dark and you may loose detail in the groom's suit.
But if you use spot metering and place the dot on the bride's face, The faces will be the middle range colour and then because this is half way between black and white, the bride's dress should be exposed correctly and so should the groom's suit. Now there are always exceptions to this but we will cover that in a future newsletter.

I hope this was helpful in some way and hopefully through future newsletters I can help you improve your own photography skills.

If you liked this newsletter, then please share it with your friends via the links below. Or if you haven't liked me on Facebook, then you can also do that below as well.

Thankyou and see you all again soon.

Brendan Fellows



 
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    Brendan Fellows
    a Photographer with over 20 years experience.

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