The Quick and Dirty - Basic Photography Course

The first and most important thing to understand for modern SLR photography is that to record an image you must have all of the following 6 things.

Light - You cannot have a picture without light in some form or another

Medium - What that light (or image) is recorded onto

Aperture - The hole that that light MUST pass through

Shutter Speed - The amount of time the light is allowed to pass through the hole

Composition - What is in your picture and how it is composed

Optics* - These are lenses that attach to our SLR camera and focus the light as an image *It is possible to record an image without optics by letting light pass through a very small aperture, this then effectively focuses the light enough that it can form an image. However optics make it much easier to achieve and also allow us to magnify or reduce the scale of the image.

Here is more detailed breakdown of the six essential requirements to recording an image:

LIGHT – To make a picture you require light, that light may be natural (sunlight/moonlight) or artificial such as a light bulb or flash. Light that our own eyes are sensitive to is called visible light but other creatures and materials are sensitive to non-visible forms of light such as ultraviolet light, infrared or x-ray. We can’t see those forms of light but some animal’s can, although we do have certain materials or mediums that can record them as a photograph.

MEDIUM - Film, digital sensor or special recording material. These materials or mediums are available in different sensitivities which are generally called ISO (film speed) and are what we record or “capture” the light onto.

APERTURE (Av = Aperture Value) – The size of the hole that the light has to pass through to form an image. An example would be a pinhole camera, this hole focuses the rays of light to form an image on the medium. However, to effectively form a high quality image we uses lenses to focus the light and the adjustable aperture inside the lens controls how much light gets through and how much of this light/image is in focus.

SHUTTER SPEED (Tv = Time Value) – The amount of time the light is allowed to pass through the hole. This provides the ability to freeze action of fast moving subjects by using a fast shutter speed or let objects or motion become blurred by using a slow shutter speed. The time the light is allowed to pass through is usually controlled by a door that opens and closes called a shutter. We can control the time we leave the shutter open for from hours to fractions of a second.

COMPOSITION – What is in your picture and how it is composed. This can also include angle of view, perspective, color, contrast and your subject.

OPTICS – A lens which focuses the light to a given point on the medium. Depending on the type of lens and its shape and the amount of elements and their space apart will determine if the image is magnified or give a wider view than your eye.


If you can understand these fundamental principles then everything else in photography no matter what, will relate back to one of or a combination of these 6 subjects



YES IT REALLY IS THAT SIMPLE!



From the six essential requirements two of them are important to learn first and fully understand; The aperture (size of the hole adjustable in the lens) and the shutter speed (Controls the amount of time that we record the light). These are the main mechanical control functions of your SLR camera, if you learn to control these manually then all other areas of photography becomes easier to understand. If you only use your Digital SLR camera in automatic modes then you will never fully benefit from the creative possibilities of your Digital SLR camera. My Photography Course covers this topic in full and also demonstrates the creative aspects of using the Shutter Speed and Aperture manually.

As a brief overview a smaller aperture will let less light through and a large aperture will allow more light through. A slow or long shutter speed will let more light through and a fast or brief shutter speed will let less light through. In photography when we adjust one we need to adjust the other to compensate for the decrease or increase in light to ensure that our recorded image is not overexposed (too bright) or underexposed (too dark). In the course materials (that I mentioned previously) you will learn how different shutter speeds affect your image, you will also see how large aperture sizes also give shallow depth of field. This means that only a shallow or small area of our picture appears to be sharp, usually this is the subject, which your lens has focused on. A small aperture would reduce the amount of light that can be recorded but it also increases the range of sharpness either side of the focus point.
This topic is fully covered in my Photography Course.



Two types of light are hard light and soft light.

SOURCES OF HARD LIGHT ARE: Light that comes from a source which has an apparent small surface area. e.g. Direct sunlight, flash, bare light bulb or a spot light.

SOURCES OF SOFT LIGHT ARE: Any light that comes from an apparent large surface area in relation to the subject that you are taking a picture of. e.g. Light through clouds on an overcast day, a big window with net curtains, a large studio soft box. Soft light can also be produced from a hard light source that has then been reflected off of a large plain surface back onto the subject therefore creating the effect of a large light.


There are also a whole slew of light mixtures and combinations in between these two extremes!

Other descriptions of light are:

TRANSMITTED LIGHT: Light visible in your image from its source.

REFLECTED LIGHT: Exactly that - light that is reflected off an object or reflected light onto our subject (most of the light that we view around us.)


Generally speaking our photos usually only include reflected light, but they can often look more exciting when we include transmitted light as part of the picture, such as featuring the sun or street
lights within our picture!

Note: Although this was written with SLR cameras in mind, it can easily be adapted to any film or digital camera. The key is to know your camera and what it is capable of doing!