Photography Basics

In which, all of my secrets are revealed. *wiggles eyebrows*

First off, I do not claim to be an expert in photography. I just happen to have a measure of luck getting the shot I want from behind the camera.

So this post may be helpful, or it may not.

Anyhow, that's out of the way and you all completely trust what I have to say.

Here are the basics:

Exposure:

Exposure is how bright the photo is. Over exposing, if done right, can have a nice, bright and airy look, but you could risk losing details and making it too bright, plus you can't always fix it when editing. Under exposing is tricky. You can fix it when editing, and you do catch all the details, but if you leave it, it will just make the photo too dark.

On the phone, it's pretty easy to adjust, as we will learn later.

On the camera, there are three different settings you can play with to change up the exposure; ISO, F-Stop, and Shutter Speed.

ISO: Is an adjustment made with numbers and deals with the general exposure. 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200, and 6400. The higher the number, the brighter the photo.

F-Stop: Is how wide the lens is open. How much light the lens allows to hit the camera body. This time, the lower the number, the wider the lens opens, the more light hits the body, the brighter the photo.

Shutter Speed: You can actually adjust how fast the shutter opens and closes. You can set it to stay open for a matter of seconds, or for 1/4000th of a second. Amazing. The longer the shutter is open, the brighter the photo will be. So if you're taking a photo of the sky at night, you'll want a very slow shutter speed, and also something to set the camera on to reduce blurriness from your hands shaking.

And it's okay if absolutely none of this makes any sense. It took someone telling me how to do it, watching a basic photography course, and a major amount of trial and error before I could get it all straight. XD

The Easy Stuff:

Zoom. We all know how that works. Zoom in to get closer.

Focus is also pretty easy. Sometimes I like autofocus, sometimes I don't. Depends on what I'm shooting.

And that's about all the settings I play with on my camera. The main thing is making sure the photos are properly exposed, in focus, centered, and level.

I also like to shoot in manual mode. There is a fully automatic mode, and that's what I used when I was first starting when I wasn't yet comfortable with playing around with the settings. But after a while manual mode is really fun.

Taking The Pictures:

Alright, so about half of the photos on here were taken with my phone (iPhone 5s and iPhone 8).There are a fair amount of tricks you can still use.

For instance, the auto exposure (how bright the picture is) is not always your best friend. You can change the exposure by tapping any area of the screen before taking the picture and dragging the yellow sun icon up or down to adjust the exposure to your liking. This is particularly helpful when shooting sunsets. The auto exposure tends to add an abundance of yellow and orange, so that the horizon is properly exposed instead of the sky. It's very annoying, but easily fixed by adjusting the exposure.

I don't usually use editing programs on my laptop, so if a photo needs a slight touch up, the standard editor that comes with the Photos app on my phone does what I need it to do. It's no Photoshop, but it does get it done.

Of course, with the new swankified iPhones there are a lot more toys in the camera department. The only difference I notice with my new phone (iPhone 8), is that the photos are maybe a slightly better quality.

The other half of the photos are taken with my Canon EOS Rebel T2I (I think the series is up to 7 now) with just the regular kit lens because I'm a normal human being.

"What about those super close up shots of the feathers? There's no way you got those with a kit lens!"

Oh yes. That was definitely still the kit lens.

So to get that particular effect, I had to take the lens off of the camera body and shoot through it. It's called Freelensing. It does take a lot of practice to get the shot right. Sometimes a whole corner is black from not lining the lens up correctly. Or there will be a weird purple tint from the light leak getting out of hand.

Don't be discouraged if it takes a while, it's not something where you can get the perfect picture the first time you try it (and dude, if you do get the perfect shot right off, wow! You got some talent right there!)

Hopefully this was somewhat helpful for y'all! 
Let me know if there's anything else you want to know about photography!