Photography Basics
Developing your Photographers Eye
Develop your eye by taking time out to look at other photographers work and ask yourself a few simple questions.
What do I like about the photo? what do I hate about this image? Take the images you like the most and deconstruct it and then reverse engineer it as best as you can. The idea is to find out what speaks to you what you like and why you like it. This is the first step in developing your photographic eye. Know what you like and Shot it
The next step is to get out there and try new things, continue to shoot the things you love from perspectives and angles you or other persons would not necessarily look at it. Get close, get low, go high, tilt the camera try different ideas nothing is considered silly at this stage.
Go out and look at the things you love to shoot and mentally take photographs with your mind before you put the camera to your eye. Once you have a clear image of photo you want to take then take the image. look at it and see if it matches the image you saw in your mind. If it doesn’t reverse engineer it until you find out why it did not come out the way you thought it would. Once you have gotten to a fairly accurate point where what you saw with your mind and what you have captured with your camera you are on your way to developing your photographic eye.
Contents of a camera
All of these pieces work together to get the final picture.
1. Light reflects off the object being photographed.
2. This light reflects off the object in all different directions and hits the lens from different angles.
3. The lens focuses these rays of light to a point behind the focal point forming a real image.
4. The film is placed at the point where the real image is projected to.
5. The shutter temporarily moves from in front of the film and allows light to hit the film.
6. Light hits the film causing chemical reactions which “expose” the film.
7. The shutter then closes, and finally the film is advanced so an unexposed piece of film is ready for the next picture.
Imagine that your image is divided into 9 equal segments by 2 vertical and 2 horizontal lines. The rule of thirds says that you should position the most important elements in your scene along these lines, or at the points where they intersect.
Doing so will add balance and interest to your photo. Some cameras even offer an option to superimpose a rule of thirds grid over the LCD screen, making it even easier to use.
Placing your main subject off-centre, as with the rule of thirds, creates a more interesting photo, but it can leave a void in the scene which can make it feel empty. You should balance the “weight” of your subject by including another object of lesser importance to fill the space.
When we look at a photo our eye is naturally drawn along lines. By thinking about how you place lines in your composition, you can affect the way we view the image, pulling us into the picture, towards the subject, or on a journey “through” the scene. There are many different types of line – straight, diagonal, curvy, zigzag, radial etc – and each can be used to enhance our photo’s composition.
The simplest way to get your horizon horizontal simply line it up with the top or bottom of your view finder. Keep in mind that the edge of your frame in your viewfinder or LCD screen will be the edges of the actual image and will be the reference point for the eventual viewers of your shots to work out whether your shot is straight or not.
Capture the Image
Physically taking a picture is fairly easy. First, you point the camera at the image you are trying to capture. Next, you look through the viewfinder of the camera to get the desired framing. After that, you have to either manually or automatically focus the camera depending on what type of camera it is. Also, you have to adjust to the correct lighting either manually or automatically. After all of that, you press down the shutter button. The hard part of taking pictures is the composition.
Usually, good pictures are the result of paying careful attention to some basic elements of composition together with appropriate lighting and an interesting subject. There is no correct way to take a picture. Four different photographers photographing the same scene could create photographs each having an entirely different composition, yet being equally interesting.
LEARNING HOW YOUR CAMERA WORKS IS THE KEY TO GREAT PHOTOGRAPHY. NO USE YOU LEARNING HOW TO DO A MOTION BLUR IMAGE IF YOU DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW TO USE THE SHUTTER CORRECTLY.
A camera is an optical instrument that records images that can be stored directly, transmitted to another location, or both. These images may be still photographs or moving images such as videos or movies. The term camera comes from the word camera obscura (Latin for “dark chamber”), an early mechanism for projecting images. The modern camera evolved from the camera obscura.
Choosing your Background
How many times have you taken what you thought would be a great shot, only to find that the final image lacks impact because the subject blends into a busy background? The human eye is excellent at distinguishing between different elements in a scene, whereas a camera has a tendency to flatten the foreground and background, and this can often ruin an otherwise great photo. Thankfully this problem is usually easy to overcome at the time of shooting – look around for a plain and unobtrusive background and compose your shot so that it doesn’t distract or detract from the subject.
Exposure
In photography, exposure is the amount of light allowed to fall on each area unit of a photographic medium (photographic film or image sensor) during the process of taking a photograph. Exposure is measured in lux seconds, and can be computed from exposure value (EV) and scene luminance in a specified region.
In photographic jargon, an exposure generally refers to a single shutter cycle. For example: a long exposure refers to a single, protracted shutter cycle to capture enough low-intensity light, whereas a multiple exposure involves a series of relatively brief shutter cycles; effectively layering a series of photographs in one image. For the same film speed, the accumulated photometric exposure (Hv) should be similar in both cases.
White Balance
White Balance is an aspect of photography that many digital camera owners don’t understand or use – but it’s something well worth 
learning about as it can have a real impact upon the shots you take.
So for those of you who have been avoiding White Balance – let me introduce you to it. I promise to keep it as simple as possible and keep what follows as usable as I can:
At its simplest – the reason we adjust white balance is to get the colors in your images as accurate as possible.
Why would you need to get the color right in your shots?
Light is a funny thing, depending on the circumstances it could be and orange color and all the way to a bluish color. This color can affect your overall subject especially if they are wearing white clothing. Understanding the white balance will help ensure, for a wedding dress, that the dress is perceived white and not blue.
Learning the basics of photography is nothing that persons would like to hear because it means that they are a beginner. There is nothing wrong with this and you have to get it in your mind that in order to become a great photographer you need to know the basics until it becomes like drinking water.
