Introduction to Photography

Now that you've try to shoot some pictures with your camera set on automatic mode, you might notice that you didn't get what you want.

You might imagine something, a picture that you had seen somewhere. Then, you see a scene that you think could give you almost the same picture. You get excited! You shoot some picture. Then when you look at the LCD, somehow, it didn't come out like what you've imagine. Then you try to shoot some more, but you just didn't get it. You try again and again, yet the result that you get just didn't even close to what you want. And worse still, you started to get frustrated and begining to think that photography is just not your thing.

First, you need to relax. Photography can be frustrating sometimes. Heck, even I still get frustrated when i didn't get my shot. The key is not to get it into you, and still keep shoot some more picture. Although right now, you may want to learn a bit about photography technique. By knowing a litle bit about photography technique, you may one-day, produce a decent photograph that you've imagine.

First of all, the concept. Photography basically making an image with light. "Painting with light" is a term that always been associated with Photography. It is the light itself that produce the painting. While a painter would need a canvas, few tubes or buckets of paint, and a few brush types. In photography we use different tools to make our "painting", which is (1) light source as our paint, (2) means to record light as our canvas, and (3) means to control light as our brush.

In Photography, we make a painting from light,
means to capture light, and means to control light.

We will discuss more of each of those three elements in photography in next chapter. Right now, I just need to stress more that in order to get photography, we just need those three elements. Camera and film will be useless if there is no light. A used cardbox can be made into a simple pin-hole camera. A simple candle or flash-light can be used as a light source. The priciple is still the same, we just need a light source that could be controled thus can be recorded in light sensitive materials.

We have two tools to control the amount of light that being recorded, APERTURE and SHUTTER SPEED. We usually have these two tools in our camera. As I told you before, camera is our brush. No matter how modern and sophicated our camera is, it is still just our brush. We use aperture and shutter speed to control the amount of light that we capture so that we could create our image that we already envisioned. So, camera does not determine how good our photograph will be like. Technology sure does helps, but it is not what makes the photograph. It just a brush. We use our brush to control the amount of light that we're going to record.

Light that being passed through by our camera and lens, are captured by our means to record light. It usually in a form of FILM or DIGITAL SENSOR. Our film and digital sensor becomes our canvas. It will record any light that we expose onto it. As long as our light-sensitive materials in our film is sensitive enough to record that light, our film definately going to record it.

From this APERTURE, SHUTTER SPEED, and FILM relationship, we could get a Photography Triangle. A triangle that is so basic in photography, that you will meet this triangle in any process in making a photograph. If you already making a photo, then you already use it. Although you may not notice itu. You dont notice it especially when you are using your automatic mode in your camera, because you let the camera to think about this triangle for you.

Photography Triangle can be considered
as the basic concept of photography

I'll be discussing more about this Photography Triangle later in next chapter. For now, i just need to say that all aspect in that triangle is interconnected. Changing one aspect, will change the setting in other aspect in order to get the same result.

So, to conclude this introduction, I'm going to say that what photography need is only 3 (three) elements, that is (1) light, (2) means to record light, and (3) means to control light. As long as there is these three elements, we could say that there's photography. There is an activity of making image from light that we "captured".

Thank you very much!

Madia
www.mk-photography.biz