Information

Before I start taking pictures around UKM, these are some information that I learned in order for me to take pictures.

Exposure  

In photography, exposure is the amount of light which reaches our camera sensor or film. It is a crucial part of how bright or dark our pictures appear.

There are only two camera settings that affect the actual “luminous exposure” of an image which are shutter speed and aperture. The third setting, camera ISO, also affects the brightness of our photos, and it is equally important to understand. We can brighten or darken a photo by editing it in post-processing software like Photoshop on computer.

It sounds basic, but exposure is a topic which confuses even advanced photographers. The reason is quite simple. For every scene, a wide range of shutter speed, aperture, and ISO settings will result in a photo of the proper brightness. Taking a photo that’s the right brightness doesn't mean you already “mastered exposure”. Even our camera’s Auto mode will do that most of the time. Instead, getting the proper exposure for a photo is about balancing those three settings so the rest of the photo looks good, from depth of field to sharpness.

Aperture

Aperture is very similar to the “pupil” of our camera lens. Just like the pupil in our eye, it can open or shrink to change the amount of light that passes through. Aperture is made up of several blades, depending on our type of lens. Aperture blades work a lot like the pupil in our eyes. At night, our pupils dilate so we can see things more easily. The same is true for aperture. When it is dark, we can open the aperture blades in our lens and let in more light. Aperture is written as f/Number. For example, we can have an aperture of f/2, or f/8, or f/16, and so on.

It is very important to remember that aperture is a fraction. This is the biggest mistake beginners make when they talk about aperture. If wrong aperture calculated, it will be difficult to remember how aperture works or use it ourself to capture the right exposure in the field.

Shutter Speed

Shutter speed isn’t particularly difficult; it is just the amount of time our camera spends taking a picture. This could be 1/100 of a second, or 1/10 of a second, or three seconds, or five minutes. Some people build custom cameras that take decades to capture a single photo.

Oour camera won’t let us take a decades-long photo. Instead, the longest allowable shutter speed tends to be around 30 seconds, although it does depend upon our camera. For example, on the Nikon D850, we can shoot any shutter speed from 1/8000 second to 30 seconds, as well as a time mode for even longer exposures. Other cameras generally allow similar settings.

First, as we would expect, a long shutter speed (several seconds) lets in a large amount of light. If we take a normal daytime photo with a 30-second shutter speed, we will capture an image that is completely white. The opposite is true, too; a quick shutter speed only lets in a small amount of light. If we take a photo at night with a 1/8000-second shutter speed, the photo will be completely black.

Second, the only other big effect is the motion blur in our images. Not surprisingly, a long shutter speed (such as five seconds) captures anything that moves during the exposure. If a person walks by, they might appear as a featureless streak across the image, since they aren’t in one place long enough for the long exposure to capture them sharply. That’s called motion blur.

By comparison, a quick shutter speed (such as 1/1000 second) does a much better job freezing motion in our photo — even something moving quickly. We can photograph a waterfall at 1/1000 second and see individual droplets frozen in midair. Without a camera, they might have been invisible.
There are two types of motion blur that we may encounter due to your shutter speed are camera blur and subject blur.

Composition

Composition is the structure of a photograph. It’s how we arrange the elements in our image to create the look we want, and it can make or break an image. If we stumble upon an interesting subject, no matter how good the light is, or how unusual the conditions are, we still need to compose the photo well if we want a successful result.

We have an absurd amount of power to change the composition of a photo. Move forwards and backwards, left and right. Change your lens; zoom in, zoom out. And pay attention to which elements of the scene we’re including, as well as the ones we’re not. Done right, composition takes our subject and presents it to our viewers as effectively as possible. It is the mechanism for conveying a message with our photos.

Rule of Thirds

The rule of thirds is perhaps the best-known element of composition is the rule of thirds, a particular method that some photographers use to frame their images. Essentially, the rule of thirds divides a photograph into nine parts, as shown below. The dividing lines themselves and, particularly, the four points of intersection – are said to be powerful locations within a photograph. If we place our main subject at any of these four points, some photographers believe that our photos will be noticeably more powerful:

Depth of Field

Depth of field is the distance between the closest and farthest objects in a photo that appears acceptably sharp. Now our camera can only focus sharply at one point. But the transition from sharp to unsharp is gradual, and the term ‘acceptably sharp’ is a loose one. Without getting too technical, how we will be viewing the image, and at what size we will be looking at it are factors which contribute to how acceptably sharp an image is. It also depends on how good our vision is. Scientifically, it is based on something called the circle of confusion. This will involve more physics.

Balance

Balance is fairly easy. To start, all we need to do is ask ourself how much attention each element in the image attracts. This is known as “visual weight.” Objects that have high levels of visual weight include bright objects, saturated colors, eyes, people, animals, high contrast, and unusual elements — anything that attracts attention in the real world. Then, figure out if the visual weight is distributed evenly across the frame, or if one half of the photo has more than the other (from left to right). If they’re roughly even, it’s a balanced photo. If not, the photo is imbalanced. (Neither is necessarily better than the other.)

In photography, we have the choice to capture balanced photos or imbalanced photos. Neither is better than the other. What matters is that they both convey different emotions. The kind of emotions could be seen as:

Balanced photos - peaceful, static, and calm
Imbalanced photos - dramatic, tense, and dynamic