Today our Summer Photography Series is going to focus (pun intended) on the 3 elements of photography that we have discussed over the last three weeks – ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed – and how they work together to achieve your ideal exposure.

What is exposure?

Exposure refers to how bright or dark your photo is. This is effected by the amount of light that is recorded by your camera’s sensor. A properly exposed photo should typically resemble the brightness of the original scene. A poorly exposed photo will either be too dark (under exposed) or too bright (over exposed), and may contain areas that are so dark or so bright that they contain no detail (know as being blown out).

Now that we understand exposure….what is the exposure triangle?

We have spent the last 3 weeks discussing ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed, the three elements often referred to as the three points of the Exposure Triangle.

It is at the intersection of these three elements that a picture’s exposure is decided.

The most important thing to understand and remember this week is that adjusting one of these 3 elements will impact each of the others. This means that you can never really isolate just one of the elements alone but always need to have the others in the back of your mind.

A window analogy

Imagine that your camera is a window with shutters or shades that you can open and close. A larger window (like a wide open/large aperture) will let more light into the room than a small window (or a small aperture).

No matter what size window you have, the longer you leave the shutters open the more light that will stream into the room, just as a long (or slow) shutter speed will let more light in to your camera’s sensor. Think of the way a sudden flash of light (from a quickly opened and closed shade or from a strobe light in a dark room) freezes action, or at least what your eye sees in that moment.

Imagine now that you are in a room with a window and you are wearing sunglasses. When I am in bright sunlight, I need sunglasses. I typically don’t wear my shades indoors, but I can imagine…. Light shades will probably not drastically change the way you view the room, but dark shades will really limit what detail you can see in the room around you.

Similarly, changing the ISO will adjust how sensitive your camera is to the available light.

A challenge

Which element of the exposure triangle (ISO, Aperture, and Shutter Speed) has been the hardest for you to grasp? Why don’t you spend this week practicing that element a little more. You could also share the successes you’ve had as you’ve worked on achieving the perfect exposure.

To ensure you don’t miss any upcoming Summer Photography Series posts, you can sign up for our RSS feed.

And feel free to grab our Summer Photography Series banner to add to your post!

Written by 5 Minutes for Mom managing editor Lolli. You can find Lolli blogging at Better in Bulk and tweeting at @1momof5.

In my ongoing quest to become a better photographer, I have found that one of the key steps to getting better results (whether you have a simple point and shoot or an expensive SLR) is understanding how cameras work.

The key to becoming a better photographer

When I understand why or how a certain result happens, I suddenly find myself more in control. Instead of leaving everything up to fate, I chose when I want a specific result….Or at least I know what I did wrong or right when a picture turns out a certain way.

One of the concepts that took a while to “click” with me was APERTURE. My problem was that I was reading books with technical explanations. I read numbers and terms like f/11 and f/2.8, large and small. All I wanted to know (at least in the beginning) was how to get the background blurry while keeping the main subject in focus.

Aperture analogy

Honestly, it wasn’t until I thought of an analogy of sorts and created a picture in my mind that the concept finally solidified in my mind. I have heard and seen better explanations, and -remember- I have never professed to be an expert on this or any photography subject. But since this is my post, I figured I’d share with you how it made sense to me.

Imagine that am opening my eyes really wide–as wide as they will go. My kids call this look “scary eyes.” Try it. Open your eyes wide. What do you notice?

First of all, things are pretty bright – as bright as they’ll get with your current setting’s light. Slowly close your eyes and watch as your light fades little by little.

Back to those wide open eyes. Another thing you’ll probably notice is that not a lot of what is in your field of vision is in focus. It’s hard to focus on much when your eyes are wide open.

Now squint your eyes (don’t forget to wrinkle your nose up while you’re at it). What do you notice now? First of all, it will seem darker. Not as much light is getting through to your eyes.

Think about this: When do you squint? I typically squint for one of two reasons. Either when it’s too bright and my eyes are too sensitive to the light, or when my natural, un-aided vision is not sufficient and I can’t see far away. I squint to see the distance.

What is Aperture?

So let’s translate that into camera language.

First, you need to understand that the aperture is the circular opening in the lens that determines how much light passes through to the camera’s sensor. The f-numbers refer to the diameter of that circular opening. The smaller the number, the more light there will be that passes through (think wide open eyes). The larger the number, the less light (think squinting eyes to see the distance).

Large aperture (small f-number)

Small aperture (large f-number)

Which aperture should I use?

The first thing I do when I am deciding which aperture to use is to look at my available lighting. Are you indoors with limited lighting and no flash? In that case, you’ll want to choose a large aperture (small number). Remember, the larger the aperture the more light you are letting in.

If you are outdoors or in a well lit area, you can vary your aperture for different effects. When you make adjustments to your aperture you are also going to effect the depth of field in your picture. We will be explaining depth of field in greater detail in another tutorial.

A large aperture will give your picture a shallow depth of field. The point that you focus your camera on will be in focus and the area around it will be blurry.

The smaller you make your aperture, the more the individual details of your picture come into focus. Sometimes you want more of your picture in focus, such as in a photo with several people in it.

Compare these apertures

Notice the difference that adjusting the aperture made in these two shots. The first has a shallow depth of field (the background is nicely blurred). The second has a deep depth of field and more of the background detail is visible.

Shallow depth of field shot at f/1.6 on an 85mm lens

Deep depth of field shot at f/6.3 on an 85mm lens

Tip: By controlling the aperture, you can control how much of your photo is in focus (among other things!). If you have a camera with AV or A priority mode, switch to that and try some test shots using different apertures. If your camera does not have AV priority, use the Portrait mode (which looks like a lady’s head profile.

Review:

Large aperture (small number) –> more light –> smaller area of focus

Small aperture (larger number)–> less light –> larger area of focus

This week’s photo challenge

Try taking a picture with a large aperture, pick your focus carefully, and blur the background.

If you have any questions during the week, feel free to ask. I’m always here to help!

To ensure you don’t miss any upcoming Summer Photography Series posts, you can sign up for our RSS feed.

And feel free to grab our Summer Photography Series banner to add to your post!

Written by 5 Minutes for Mom managing editor Lolli. You can find Lolli blogging at Better in Bulk and tweeting at @1momof5.

Photos of Lolli’s daughter in this post were taken by Lolli’s amazing sister, Andrea, owner of Andrea Marie Photography and author of the blog DAVE family.

Summer Photography Series, Week 2

Remember the days before digital cameras? It seems like ages ago when I would put film into the back of my camera whenever I wanted to take a set of pictures. When my roll of 24 shots was finished, I’d take the small canister to the photo department and drop it off to get developed.

Most of the time, while I was waiting for a roll to be developed, I would stare at the wall of new film to pick out a replacement canister for my next set of pictures. I often wondered which was the “right” box to buy for the pictures that I wanted to take.

I saw boxes labeled ISO 100, 200, 400, 800….. and I had no idea which one to pick!

What is ISO?

ISO literally stands for “International Organization for Standardization.”

Before the digital age, photographers bought their film in different “speeds.” The ISO number referred to the speed of the film, or it’s sensitivity to light. Although digital cameras don’t use film, the term ISO is still used to refer to a camera’s light sensitivity.

Instead of having to change your film for each unique lighting situation, digital cameras are able to adjust the ISO, or how they process the light coming in, internally. You can change your ISO each time you take a picture (but in general, I will change my ISO 1 or 2 times during a shoot). It’s one of the many things that I love about digital photography!

The ISO you use lets you know how sensitive the camera’s image sensor is to the amount of light present. The lower the ISO (say 200) the slower the speed of the sensor’s ability to capture light, the higher the ISO (say 1600) the faster the sensor’s ability to capture light. When your sensor is more sensitive to the ambient light, you are better able to take pictures in low-light situations.

Which ISO should I use?

I always try to use the lowest possible ISO (ie – 200 or 400).

Wait. Didn’t I just say that higher ISOs allow me to take pictures in low light situations? Yes, but those higher ISOs do come at a cost.

The higher the ISO, the more grain and digital noise you will notice in your pictures. Noise is not good. I like my pictures to be as crisp, clean, and as sharp as possible, so I only use a high ISO when I absolutely have to.

When outdoors, I usually shoot with ISO 100 or 200. If I am shooting something fast-moving (like a child), then I will go for ISO 200 to 400. On a cloudy day or in the later afternoon, I’ll usually use a higher ISO (400).

When I am indoors I typically use ISO 400 or 800, and often bump the ISO up to 1000 or even 1600 when I really want to snap a picture in a not-so-bright room without a flash.

High ISOs are especially helpful when taking pictures where flash is not permitted, such as a museum or a concert. I would much rather deal with a grainy picture than a blurry one.

Can you see the difference?

At first glance, the three images included in this post look the same. All 3 pictures of my niece were taken on the same day against the same wall, with the same general settings. The only thing that my sister changed was the ISO.

Notice that each of the 3 pictures is correctly exposed. However, look closely at the wall in the background and the edges of the butterfly mask. As the ISO gets higher, the wall becomes more grainy and the mask becomes less crisp at the edges. The photo taken at ISO 3200 is still a great picture…..but if you’re striving for clarity and detail, then the picture taken at ISO 160 is definitely the way to go.

ISO Challenge

This week’s assignment is to take a picture indoors without using the flash.

Just adjust your ISO until the lighting looks right and your subject is no longer blurry. This could take a little bit of trial and error, but it is definitely worth the practice. Be sure to come back to share your picture(s) and let us know what ISO you used and how it changed how your picture turned out.

If you have any questions during the week, feel free to ask. I’m always here to help!

To ensure you don’t miss any upcoming Summer Photography Series posts, you can sign up for our RSS feed.

And feel free to grab our Summer Photography Series banner to add to your post!

Written by 5 Minutes for Mom managing editor Lolli. You can find Lolli blogging at Better in Bulk and tweeting at @1momof5. Photos by Lolli’s amazing sister, Andrea, owner of Andrea Marie Photography and author of the blog DAVE family.

What can running actions teach you about Photoshop Elements? Aside from taking you from this image:

to this one?

Actions can make you a master of layers, brushes and even intimidating layer masks.

You can find many actions compatible with Photoshop Elements. For this example, I’ll be using MCP’s Complete Workflow. The Complete Workflow is a great teaching tool because it uses a wide variety of common Photoshop features. I also used MCP’s Finish It to resize and sharpen these photos for the web, and to add watermarks and branding boxes. Full disclosure: I work at MCP as a Photoshop Elements consultant. I love these actions and use them just about every day. However, I do have a vested interest in their success! MCP has free actions available for download, if you’d like to try them.

1. Just about everyone uses Levels, or should use Levels, on their images. But how do you know which way to move all the sliders when you add a levels adjustment layer? MCP’s Complete Workflow contains this tip:The Levels window looked like this, before adjustment: and my adjusted window looked like this: Notice the numbers under the “mountain.” I moved the middle slider to the left a bit to brighten the subject’s skin, and I brought in the right slider (for whites and brights) until it was just under where the “pixel mountain” begins to rise. My image now looked like this:
2. How do I turn a layer off if I don’t want to use it at all? Click the eyeball on the left side of a layer to toggle that layer on or off.
3. How do I reduce the effect of a layer? For instance, in the following image, I turned on the Warm It Up layer. However, the image was much to warm. I reduced the opacity of the layer to 49% by using the opacity slider in the top right corner of the layers palette. The opacity of each layer is typed on all layers palette images in this post so that you can see my adjustments.
4. What is a layer mask? A layer mask allows you to control where on an image to apply an effect. On the layer in the above Layers Palette above called “A Little More Kick,” I have hidden the “Kick” effect from all areas where I painted black. Wherever the layer mask is white, the effect is showing through loud and clear.
5. What is a good way to remember what to do with layer masks? Say over and over to yourself, “White reveals, black conceals.“
6. How can I reduce the effect of a effect on a specific area without removing it altogether? Instead of painting in black on the layer mask, paint in gray by reducing the opacity of your paint brush. Just remember to adjust the opacity on your brush options palette at the top of your workspace – it looks something like the image above. The layer “Paint on Pop” in the image below below has white areas where the Pop effect is showing through at full force. It has black areas where the effect is completely hidden. And it has gray areas where the effect was partially hidden by painting with a black brush at 50% opacity.
7. How do I know when a layer mask is active for editing and painting? The layer mask thumbnail (the white or black box on the right of your layer) should have a white outline around it. This layer mask is ready for painting: If a layer mask doesn’t have the white outline, click on it. This layer mask is not ready for editing:
8. How do I know when enough is enough when using the High Pass sharpening method? This message from MCP’s Complete Workflow will help. (Don’t know what the High Pass Sharpening Method is? Oh, it’s a good one. Perhaps the subject of another tutorial?) This is what you want to look for in the preview window: Note that you can barely see outlines of the eye, and no color is visible.
9. How do I add a vignette in PSE? With your top layer highlighted, type control+alt+shift+e to duplicate all layers. Select the rectangular marquee tool from the tool box, change the feathering to somewhere between 100 and 250, and draw a rectangle surrounding the majority of the center of your image – everything you don’t want vignetted. You can just barely see the outline of my selection in this screen shot:When the rectangle is selected, press the delete key to erase the inside of the image. Change the blending mode of that layer to multiply, and adjust the opacity to taste.
10. What else can I do with blending modes? Experiment. If you aren’t happy with the color or strength of the vignette, for instance, change the blending mode to see how to various modes affect the appearance of your image. Pay attention to blend modes assigned to layers created by the action as well, and get a feel for which modes are used in which situations.

Running an action will set you up to learn advanced features of PSE without all the legwork. Give it a try and feel free to change the settings established by the action creator. You will definitely learn by playing, and will probably end up with a stunning photo as well!

As photographers, we love doing outdoor photo shoots with kids and families! They’re usually a lot of fun for everybody, and the pictures are a blast. But, really, half the benefit of hiring a professional photographer to do your photos is their practical knowledge of how to organize the shoot so that it turns out a success. Today I’m going to share some of these tips that you can use in taking photos of your own kids!

(The other benefit to hiring a professional photographer is the $5,000+ of photo gear they bring along. That’s a bit harder to share with you in a blog!)

So far on 5 Minutes for Photography, we’ve talked about shooting from unique camera angles, and how to zoom in and out to fill the frame and control your background. Now, here are some practical tips for a do-it-yourself photo shoot with your kids.

1. Go somewhere different. Give your kids (and yourself) a change of scenery for the afternoon. They’ll be more excited, and it will make your photos more interesting! A park or playground works great, or if you’re near the ocean or a river or lake, that can be a big hit too.

I know some parts of the country have snow on the ground right now, and others are 80 degrees and sunny… so take advantage of whatever nature offers you! (We got to escape the Oregon rain last weekend to shoot a wedding in Sacramento, and the change of pace was great!)

This little guy got pretty excited by a local cornfield:

2. Take along props. Simple kid-sized chairs or other things you have sitting around the house can make photos look a lot more interesting!

3. Keep them thinking about everything but the photos. Surprise them with a toy you brought along. Encourage them to race against each other or play games. Have them spin around in circles until they’re dizzy, or start a tickle war. You want the photos to show their genuine excitement and emotion, and “say cheese!” usually doesn’t produce that!

4. Shoot photos like crazy. Camera memory sticks are cheap, and hold hundreds of photos. Don’t wait for the “perfect moment” to magically appear… when a scene starts looking halfway decent, start clicking away like your life depends on it! It’s easy to throw out the “rejects” later.

When we shoot an hour-long photo session with kids, we’ll come back with 600+ photos. That’s an average of one photo every ten seconds! Then we’ll narrow them down to about 30-40 favorite images which we’ll deliver to the family.

5. Dress for success. Select outfits for your kids that will look good in front of the camera:

• Bright colors work great, and give a cheerful look to the photos.
• It’s not important for the kids to all be wearing perfectly matching clothing, but it’s a good idea to have them dressed in similar styles (light or dark colors, long or short sleeves, etc.)
• You don’t want the outfits to distract from the faces and emotions in the pictures, so it’s best to avoid patterns or designs with too much contrast.

Although we do like this photo of our son (on the left), the plaid shirt has so much contrast that it distracts from the rest of the photo. But on the right-hand photo, the boy’s solid red shirt really emphasizes the colors nicely, without drawing attention to itself.

6. Go with the flow. Sometimes kids just aren’t in the mood for lots of photos. If you can switch gears to keep them from feeling stressed out about it, it will pay off in the long run! We’ve seen many families where Mom picks up a camera and the kids get tense and start acting out, but when we come in to take photos, they’re all smiles.

Your goal should be to make a photo shoot with them as fun as possible! (If all else fails, I recommend a quick stop at Dairy Queen on the way home. There aren’t any rules against bribery…)

I hope this has given you some ideas to get started with. Most important is just deciding to make time to create some unique images of your family, and you may be surprised at how much fun it turns out to be!

Have fun trying out these ideas, and share your photos with us! Post some of your favorite images on your own blog, and add it to our Mr. Linky:

And if you like, you can display a 5 Minutes for Photography button in your post to help your readers find more photo posts.

<br /> <a href="http://www.5minutesformom.com/tag/5-minutes-for-photography/" target="_blank"><img class="aligncenter" src="http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k210/5m4m/buttons/sisters/5m4photog125x125.jpg" border="0" alt="award"/></a>

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Carrie B and her husband Jonathan are Oregon wedding photographers, and you can see more of their recent photos on their photography blog. She’s also a staff reviewer for 5 Minutes for Books, and operates her own book review blog as well!

If there is one thing we moms all have in common — we love to have tons of great photos of our kids!

So, whether you are fanatical about taking photos or you are holding that new digital camera desperately wishing you wish you knew how to make it take those great shots you want, this new column will give you some ideas to inject extra creativity into your photography.

We’ll focus on simple things that anyone, with any camera, can do. And there will be lots of examples along the way…

Filling the Frame

In our last 5 Minutes for Photography post we looked at shooting from creative angles. This week we’re going to talk about giving your photos more impact by zooming in on your subject.

Particularly when you’re taking pictures of kids, photos are usually all about their expression or their activity. The environment generally doesn’t have much to offer — a messy bedroom, a cluttered yard… not exactly National Geographic material. I know the feeling.

The biggest thing you can do to change this is, zoom in! I know this may sound like a “duh”, but bear with me.

Try this: Before taking a picture, check the distance between your subject and the four edges of your image, and then reposition or zoom the camera until the subject is right up against as many of them as possible.

Here, my son was striking a great pose, but there was a hideously ugly port-a-potty in the background — and brightly colored, to boot. (Every photographer’s dream! Not.) But by zooming in to fill the frame, you hardly notice the stuff in the background!

Here’s another idea to control your backgrounds even more: Rather than taking a photo from a few feet away as you normally might do, if you back up twice as far from the subject but zoom in twice as much, the photo will show a much different background around the subject.

Even though the subject is exactly the same size in these photos, look at the difference in the background between shooting with a wider angle compared to zooming in:

Now, I’m not claiming that one of these photos is “better”, but you can see how the background changes completely by zooming in or out, without affecting the subject at all, when you change position to make up for it. By controlling this, you can make the decision with every photo you take about what style background will look best.

With an SLR camera, your background will be more fuzzy and out-of-focus the more you zoom in. This created a perfect effect here:

By zooming in, it’s also fine to forgo full-body shots, and capture only as much of your subject’s body as is necessary to “tell the story”:

Be forewarned that, the further you zoom in, the more obvious it will be if you’re not holding the camera perfectly still. (This is where that anti-shake or vibration-reduction feature comes in handy!) You may want to use a flash or shoot in outdoor light to keep from getting blurry photos.

In this last photo, the background is actually just the sun shining through a white curtain over our back window. But because the sunlight was so bright, it created a perfectly white background when we laid our son with a blanket on the table in front of the window:

(We also had to turn off the flash for this photo, and kept increasing the camera’s brightness control until the background was solid white. Zooming in kept all the window’s edges are outside the photo so as not to be distracting!)

Have fun trying out these ideas, and share your photos with us! Post some of your favorite images on your own blog, and add it to our Mr. Linky:

And if you like, you can display a 5 Minutes for Photography button in your post to help your readers find more photo posts.

<br /> <a href="http://www.5minutesformom.com/tag/5-minutes-for-photography/" target="_blank"><img class="aligncenter" src="http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k210/5m4m/buttons/sisters/5m4photog125x125.jpg" border="0" alt="award"/></a>

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Carrie B and her husband Jonathan are Oregon wedding photographers, and you can see more of their recent photos on their photography blog. She’s also a staff reviewer for 5 Minutes for Books, and operates her own book review blog as well!

If there is one thing we moms all have in common — we love to have tons of great photos of our kids!

So, whether you are fanatical about taking photos or you are holding that new digital camera desperately wishing you wish you knew how to make it take those great shots you want, this new column will give you some ideas to inject extra creativity into your photography.

We’ll focus on simple things that anyone, with any camera, can do. And there will be lots of examples along the way…

Creative Camera Angles

Let’s start this series with the most important element of a good photo — composition. By which I mean, basically, “Make it look interesting!”

For a long time, 90% of my photos were taken like this:

Occasionally they came out really cute. But, after a while… all the photos pretty much look the same.

So, I challenged myself with, “No more boring photos!” The camera was allowed to shoot from anywhere BUT at my eye-level standing a few feet away from the subject.

And I discovered two new ideas that totally changed the composition, which I’ll talk about here.

First, try shooting down at your subject from directly above.

Digital cameras nowadays make this really easy, because you don’t have to hold the camera up to your eye all the time to see through the viewfinder — you can hold it out at arm’s length, tilted down a bit, and still get a good idea of what you’re shooting from the preview on the back of the camera.

This picture is one of my favorites… the all-white background was thanks to a recent snowfall, one of the first our son had ever seen. He’s still a bit uncertain about the whole business, as you can tell by his expression.

When you’re shooting at arm’s length from above the subject, it’s important to:

• To start with, pick a subject who’s short. (Little kids are ideal.)
• Always have them look up at you! (Otherwise you’ll just see a head of hair.)

• Zoom your camera out as wide-angle as possible, but move the camera fairly close to the subject. This will emphasize the unusual angle, and also make it easier for you to keep the subject in the frame.
• For shooting several people together, you can take picture by leaning over a balcony or stair railing and shooting down toward the floor below. This can make a fun family portrait, like this one we took of some friends:


Give this a try, and see how it works for you!

Next, try shooting up at your subject from below. (This usually means “ground level”, as anything lower than that takes a bit too much effort!)

Tilt the camera up slightly so that you don’t get too much of the ground in your photo. This gives you a completely different viewpoint that normal:

Here, my camera was just an inch or two off the surface of a patch of daisies, angled up to bring in the sky. (On days where there are wispy clouds above, this gives a great effect.)

This works well if the subject is looking away from the camera, for a more candid look. (Especially if kids are playing and you can take the photo without distracting them.) Like this photo from our son’s 2nd birthday party, VERY excited about having just unwrapped this book:

For infants and babies, bringing the camera down to their level brings out a lot more of their features and expressions. And a game of “peek-a-boo” can turn into great pictures…

And if you like, you can display a 5 Minutes for Photography button in your post to help your readers find more photo posts.

<br /> <a href="http://www.5minutesformom.com/tag/5-minutes-for-photography/" target="_blank"><img class="aligncenter" src="http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k210/5m4m/buttons/sisters/5m4photog125x125.jpg" border="0" alt="award"/></a>

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Carrie B and her husband Jonathan are Oregon wedding photographers, and you can see more of their recent photos on their photography blog. She’s also a staff reviewer for 5 Minutes for Books, and operates her own book review blog as well!