Getting the details all wrong

Who knew there was so much to know about taking pictures?

A lot of people, probably.

I’ve never been a great detail person. I tend to look at the big picture, and view the specific details of most processes as needless minutiae, with the express purpose of annoying me. As though my time is worth too much to concentrate on the smaller details.

And details are what photography is all about.

In the past two weeks, I learned a lot about what it takes to shoot great photos. That isn’t to say I can shoot great photos, but I do have a better understanding of how to start. It really started with the realization that cameras do not record moments; they capture light. From that understanding, my own camera become more approachable.

In my high school, I do not teach the introductory journalism classes. I only advise one of the production classes. My colleague has lots of pictures hung in our room about manipulating a camera: ISO numbers, and f/stop numbers and shutter speed numbers. Numbers, numbers, numbers. I did not know what any of them meant. The sight of those numbers sent me into a flashback/nightmare about math class. I think I avoid anything related to numbers for that exact reason.

In any case, this week I learned that ignoring those numbers has worked against me. The ISO was the first number we covered in class. It just controls the camera’s sensitivity to light. The brighter it is, the lower the ISO. The darker it is, the higher the ISO. You don’t want to mess with the ISO too much after you have set it for an environment, unless it suddenly clouds over. Easy enough.

The next item I learned about was how the aperture works. The aperture, of course, is the opening in the lens, and it can be opened wide (f/4) or narrowed (f/22). The wider the opening, the more light comes in, but the more out of focus the fore- or background will appear. The narrower the opening, the less light comes in, but the fore- or background will be more in focus.

Finally, I learned about shutter speed. It works in combination with the ISO and aperture settings. The faster the shutter speed, like 1/4000 of a second, the more likely you are to freeze motion without blur. But that means the shutter is open for such a short amount of time that it can’t let much light in.

There are ways to compensate and play around with the settings, such as the rule of reciprocity (if you move the aperture four stops one way, you should move the shutter speed four stops the other way), but I’m still learning how to manipulate those.

My photo slideshow will be up for you to peruse shortly. Which brings me to what else I learned this week; don’t procrastinate when it comes to posting your work online. Because now, under the gun, I cannot for the life of me get my photo slideshow to imbed properly.