Last week i hosted a photography workshop for my club (Monash Photography Club). It was intended for the beginner as around 60% of our club member regard themselves as beginner in photography. The workshop was attended by around 50 students, which exceeds all our expectation. We even run out of pizza!
I received lots of positive comment from the beginner members. They said that the presentation was easy to understand yet very informative. If you are wondering whats the teaching that day, lets get started!
These are the main points of my presentation.
- Introduction to Photography
- Exposure
- Composition
- Assignments
Introduction To Photography
- Photography is a system of “Human”, “Lenses” and “Sensor/Film”
- They works on principal of “whole is greater than sum of parts”
- All three elements interacting together to produce photograph
- You don’t need big long lenses and $10,000 camera to produce good photograph
Exposure and Composition
- A photograph is always a combination of exposure and composition.
- Exposure dictates the amount of light (basically a combination of shutter, aperture, and ISO sensitivity)
- Composition dictates how the elements in the photograph interact with each others (includes light, framing, depth of field, patterns, contrast etc.)
Shutter Speed
- Its the duration of letting the sensor exposed to light
- The longer = The brighter
- The shorter = The darker
- Long = prone to blurring – why tripod
- Short = freeze motions – big aperture
In order to capture a fast moving subjust like this, fast shutter speed is needed.
To capture a night scene like this, slow shutter is best. Notice that it also captures the cloud movements which is not possible to be captured with fast shutter.
If you don't happen to bring a tripod for that one shot, try to use half a second shutter speed. Which is slow enough to capture night scene, but also very prone to blur-ness unless you have steady hands.
Aperture
- How wide does the lens opens to let lights in
- Wider = more light, less depth of field
- Shallower = less light, more depth of field
Example of wide aperture shot to capture the bokeh (the term for blur background with sharp object).
ISO Sensitivity
- The sensitivity of the film/camera sensor
- Higher ISO = more sensitive to light, need less shutter speed, more grain
- Lower ISO = less sensitive to light, need more shutter speed, less grain
- Grains appear more on dark/shadowy area than highlighted area.
Basic Composition
- Rule of third – I’ll write more in-depth article next time
Basically, rule of third means placing the object off centre. For best result, place it in intersection of thirds.
- Framing – It could evokes sense of intimacy and secrecy
Anything can be frame for your object. Trees, peoples, gates, clouds, mountains, etc. Use your imagination.
- Spaces – Instead of fully filling the frame with your object, putting them on the side while giving a space to breath could produce captivating results
Experiment with spaces, sometimes you will find it really interesting
- Colour/Contrast – Makes the object stand out from the background.
The shadowy running watter provides striking contrast with the baby's skin color and tone
- Perspective – Be unique!
Instead of taking shots with the normal angles, try to go low or high to create a bizzare and unique shots.
- Pattern – Human brain is somewhat hardwired to find pattern in daily life, thus creating pattern can create a sense of familiarity.
Find the pattern!
- Lines – Use of leading lines to direct the viewer’s eyes to the place where you want them to see.
Notice that even though the square is place on the border of the frame, your eyes is still directed to it because of the lines. Exploit the line!
- Depth of field – Blur and sharp!
Depth of field is very limited in this photo as i only use f2 aperture (which is very wide). Thus throwing the other chess piece off focus, directing your eyes to the ones in focus.
- Sense of movement
Photographs are still objects, but we can still invoke illusion of movement by using slow shutter speed to capture moving objects. Make sure your hands are steady or be ready to expect blurs.
Assignments
After learning all the basics, get your camera and try to capture your everyday objects while utilizing your new gained knowledge. You may show them to your friends to see what they think of it, or you might even show it to me! I’ll make sure i critics the hell out of your image, haha.
The essence of photography is learning the rules and learn how to break them.
Let your imagination run wild, experiment with the extremes, try that shot you always wanted. You will be surprised how cool the experiment will look like.
Anyway, i’ll show you some image taken by the workshop students. Most of them took me by surprise :p
I do not took these pictures, and their copyright belong to their respective creator.
First experiment with the rules of third. I'd say its not bad eh!
Leading line experiment, though i'd say placing the arrow on the left side of the image would work much better.
I'm not sure what he tries to capture, but the pattern on the floor and building plus constrasty sky make this a really good photo
Rules of third and frame experiment. worked nicely.
Depth of field experiement
Leading lines and perspective.
A really good change of perspective, and also rule of thirds
I really like this picture. Mainly because of the contrast between chair and the bricks, the person is also placed off centre to give more power to the photo.
A very good experiment with panning.
Zooming like this can be achieved by using a rather slow shutter speed and zoom the lens while pressing shutter button.
I hope you enjoy this lesson, and be sure to drop me a comment or two.
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