Photography Triangle

We've come to a term "Painting with light" which can really summarize what we are doing with photography. We are making an image that the light itself that doing all the work. We just capturing what's available for us given by the sun (and other light source). Later on, we will find out that the term of "capturing" what's available for us isn't going to be enough to explain what's all about photography, but for the sake of simplicity, right now, I'm just going to use "capturing light", as a term to explain about photography. Are you agree with me on this? Well, you don't have a choice anyway hehehehe. In order to capture light, we need the right tools. We need light sensitive materials, that going to change its properties when light being exposed onto it, AND most importantly, keeping that properties even being exposed to more lights when we are going to enjoy what we've been photographed. We also need means to control the amount of lights that we are going to pass through and exposing a light-sensitive materials. In photography, means to control lights that we can use is shutter speed and aperture. Now that we already got three most important tools in photography, we can put these three tools in one Photography Triangle as you can see at figure below. To complete our triangle, we need another tool, a light meter, that we're going to use to help us calculate what combination of film - shutter speed - aperture to make a "well balanced light photograph" (phew for the complex term hahaha). This tool is going to "connect" the other three tools that i've been talking about. Light meter is a tool that we could use to calculate the right amount of light needed to exposed the light-sensitive material. So, a complete diagram of Photography Triangle can be seen below. Photography Triangle can be considered as the basic concept of photography All these three tools are connected and depend on each other. Changing the setting of one of the corner of the triangle, will change the setting in other corner. Provided with a scene, light meter will calculate the right combination of film, shutter speed, and aperture needed to capture the scene correctly. If we didn't follow what light meter recommend us to use, then our photo will look either brighter or darker. Our photograph will looked brighter because of too much light that being captured, or darker because of too little light that being captured. I did not say that brighter or darker photo is a bad photo. In fact, there are photos that are better being captured as brighter or darker. But in general, a well balanced light in a photo is what we usually considered as good photograph. Bright Photo Dark Photo Unfortunately for those who hates numbers, in photography, we depend the quality of our photo in numbers. With film, we have ASA or ISO to use as a guide of sesitivity to light of film that we use. Shutter speed are counted in "1/x second". So a number of "125" in shutter speed means that the shutter will open and pass the light for "1/125" second. Last but not least, in aperture we have " f/ ". Technically, there's a better definition about this aperture thingy. Unfortunately for you, even I don't remember it hahahaha!! I could look for it in my books, so that you could see me as know everything kind a guy. Or you could do it yourself with google or wikipedia. But I want to make things simple for you to read, so I just going to say that aperture is the diameter of the 'hole' that passing through the light. As for the numbers, you just have to accept it that there are few numbers that eventually you will remember. For you girls, please don't be mad or confuse to your partner or boyfriend if they can't remember dates and numbers as good as you are, but could remember numbers for horse power, lens focal length or last night soccer result. We boys are just not created to remember numbers except if we're going to use those numbers in our conversation with our friends. Obviously, we boys aren't talking about our anniversary dates with our mates. So please don't be mad to us if we just bad in numbers and dates (and also names, for me hehehe). Back to our Photography Triangle. The elements in this triangle is all connected. As i said before, changing the setting in one element of the triangle, to get the same result, we have to change the setting in other element of the triangle. For example, to photograph a landscape scenery our light meter say that we get the combination of ASA 400 - speed 1/125 s - f/ 5.6. Then, we change the aperture from f/ 5.6 into f/8. By doing that, we need to change either the speed (into 1/60 s), OR changing the film ASA (into 800). Below is a table of other combination that would make the same well balanced light in our photo. Film (ASA/ISO) Shutter Speed (second) Aperture (f/) 400 1/125 5.6 400 1/60 8 400 1/30 11 800 1/125 8 1600 1/125 11 200 1/60 5.6 100 1/30 5.6 Table of Film-Speed-Aperture combination that produce the same well balanced light Photography triangle is a process that we use in every photo that we took. In my mind, it is the most basic and important concept of photography. That's why i'm still teaching it. I admid, that with the help of camera technology, this process is becoming more simple and faster. Some people even say that this teaching is becoming outdated and we dont need to know this to make our photo. I'm fully aware of this. Heck, I even trust my camera calculation by using "aperture priority mode" in most of my photos that i took. I rarely use "manual mode" anymore. But, eventhough I depend most of the time to my camera for doing this Photography Triangle calculation, I'm doing it because I understand most of the basic of Photography Triangle. I know why I'm using 1/125 second shutter speed, or f/2.8 aperture, or ASA 1600 for my film. Using these settings comes from a conscious decisions. I'm just using my camera as a tool to make everything a bit faster. Thank you very much! Madia www.mk-photography.biz