Category: Photography

Welcome back to the longest (only) photography blog I have ever written. The first 5 posts laid down the skills necessary for a photographer to start taking truly, easy stylized photos!

There are two main rules to photography: The Rule of Thirds, and there are no rules – when done correctly.

The Rule of Thirds is very simple yet very effective. Imagine two horizontal and two vertical lines intersecting on an image and separating it into a 3×3 grid. The subject of the photograph should be positioned at the intersection points. For a visualization, here is an example from a photo I took of a stranger in Urban Outfitters:

As you can see, the subject is on the edge and on the intersection points of the horizontal and vertical lines. However, the Rule of Thirds only works for portraits like this when the talent, or person posing, is facing away from the side of the frame he or she is on. Otherwise, it will create what’s known as negative space. For example, here is a similar photo without the talent facing the correct direction:

The photo is visually confusing. Where do you look? Your eye is supposed to look where he is looking, but there’s nothing there so you try to focus on the right edge and the tree at the same time.

The second rule: there are no rules. The Rule of Thirds is just one rule to follow in order to allow a photo to tell a story or at least imply that one exists. Although photographers can keep this ‘tried and true’ rule in their back pocket, much more stylistic photos can be taken by breaking or bending the rules. The only catch is that the photo has to draw the eyes somewhere specific.

The Rule of Thirds teaches photographers the positioning of talents and the surroundings. Using these techniques, one can venture off into other types of photos without using this rule.

To visually explain, I went out last night and took photos of a friend. I took these photos at night, while it was snowing, and in the most unflattering lighting, I could find. If you read the other 5 posts, the ‘taken at night’ aspect should already make you think about having to change the settings to even show anything on the camera.

Essentially, I took photos in the worst settings I could find but used some posing and positioning techniques to make them look much better than they could have been otherwise.

The first photo was positioned using “leading lines”, or natural lines in the surroundings of a photo that point to the subject of the photo. Here are two examples, see if you can find straight lines that point to the subject:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the first picture, the vertical lines in the door point down to the talent in the middle or possibly help to point up to where she is looking. In the second photo, the lines on the sidewalk and the line between the road and the snow point to the center of the photo (where the talent is).

You can break the rule of thirds by using visible lines to guide you instead of imaginary ones. One trickier technique is to use what’s known as “framing” to very obviously tell the viewers where to look by blocking the subject in some sort of shape like in these photos:

The talent is blocked inside some sort of shape which directs the viewer’s eyes.

In conclusion, even photos taken in terrible conditions can be made to look great if you follow some rules … or maybe even break them.

I’m sorry to say this is my last blog post on this topic. Thank you for reading, I just feel bad ending so abruptly and with only a few techniques for actually taking better photos … alright, you convinced me, I’ll give you a bonus technique.

To add some flair to any photo, simply put some sort of light in the talent’s eyes or on their glasses. It will automatically appear to be a better photo (and you look like a more talented photographer). Here are some examples:

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– Michael Magnotti

Part-time writer, Michael Magnotti, thrives on leading passionate people to see the world in different ways. Although Michael writes about very different topics, he uses them all as an easy-to-read guide for seeing what you didn’t know was there!

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Personally, essential photography (general ability to take well-composed photos) lends itself to two major factors: ISO and f-stop. After one understands those two, it becomes easy to stylize photos to tell a story. One such way is through shutter speed.

Shutter speed can create a stylized look to your photos depending on what you would like to capture. Before we go over the pros, let’s discuss the cons. When you use quicker shutter speeds, less light can be captured because the lens is not open as long, which can dim your image. On the other hand, when you use slower shutter speeds more light can be captured due to the length of time the camera takes in information. Do not be daunted by this, because you have all the tools you need to correct these effects.

In order to utilize shutter speed for style, the subject must be determined first. Let’s look at some subjects:

The three subjects include skateboarding, stars, and flowing water. To start off, Skateboarding as a subject can come in many different varieties.

If you want a still shot of skateboard with normal shutter speed, the left would be your best shot (no pun intended). If you want to take an action shot, then you need to be able to CAPTURE a moment very quickly (faster shutter speed). As you can see from the picture below, changing the shutter speed allows for a more stylized and storytelling photo.

As another example, take a look at the difference between the two pictures of stars. The top photo was taken with a slow shutter speed to pick up the details of the night sky. The bottom picture was taken with a, yes, even slower shutter speed. Because the earth spins, it appears as though the stars spin around us on the surface. By changing the shutter speed you drastically change thy style and feel to a photograph like this photographer did to create those swirling circling constellations.

While looking on my stock photo website, I found a photographer that took a picture of the same river in two different styles to drive home the effect it can have. The top photo pictures fast-moving water, which would require a quick shutter speed and does not add too much stylistically. The bottom picture was taken with a much slower shutter speed which intentionally blurred the motion of the image. In doing so, the photographer can make the previously gloomy and boring photo of the water into a whimsical silky, watery, haven.

If these examples did not prove the effect of shutter speed, then I do not know what will. I hope you can find a chance to use these techniques! If you do send me some photos!

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– Michael Magnotti

Part-time writer, Michael Magnotti, thrives on leading passionate people to see the world in different ways. Although Michael writes about very different topics, he uses them all as an easy-to-read guide for seeing what you didn’t know was there!

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Before you start messing with the settings on an expensive camera (any camera for that matter) it helps to learn what those settings mean. In previous blogs, I have mentioned what photography is and means to me and some techniques such as aperture size and exposure (known as F-stop and ISO).

As one may have guessed from the title, today we will talk about F-stop; aperture size. If you look at the two photos above, you can see the difference in focuses. The picture on the left captures detail about every speck of light in the view of the camera, some cameras even have an infinity focus to be able to take clearer photos of the night sky. On the other hand, the picture on the left focuses only on the talent’s face and parts of her hair, it almost cuts out of focus by the time your eyes reach her shoulder.

This contrast in focus is not from where you tap on your iPhone or where you twist your lens to focus on your DSLR camera (digital camera). The effect comes from a setting known as the F-stop.

F-stop is the size of your aperture or how much light is being let into the camera. These numbers come in inverses, which can be confusing. For example, an f-stop of f/8 means the shutters are open 1/8 of the size of the lens. The bigger the f-stop, the smaller the aperture size, the less light that comes in.

Similar to how changing the ISO changes the quality of the photo. Changing the F-stop also changes the Depth of Field. As a quick explanation of Depth of Field (DOF), it is simply how much of an area is in focus to your camera lens. A larger f-stop (smaller aperture size) gives us a deeper depth of field. If the DOF is deep, then more of the image is in focus, very similar to the picture of the stars from the beginning. If the DOF is shallower, then less of the object or talent is in focus, like our portrait photo of the girl on the right.

To most of you, you don’t have a camera that can handle a change in F-stop, but that does not mean it hurts to understand it. The truth is, all cameras have an f-stop. For example, the iPhone 8 has an f-stop of 1.8, which explains why you can zoom in on a photo taken on an iPhone and still see a lot of details in the background.

To bring this to a close, I gave a lot of information but it is all easy to understand. The f-stop changes how much light and how much of the image the camera can focus on and interpret. Depending on the photo you want to take, the change in the f-stop can help the photo tell a better story. If you cannot change the f-stop of the camera (like on an iPhone), my first two blogs should provide some help on how to adjust for it. I hope this helps, and I hope it inspires you to go out and focus on what YOU want to see.

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– Michael Magnotti

Part-time writer, Michael Magnotti, thrives on leading passionate people to see the world in different ways. Although Michael writes about very different topics, he uses them all as an easy-to-read guide for seeing what you didn’t know was there!

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In the last passion blog post, we discussed what a photographer is and what they do. Now we must talk about how they do it. Photographers employ many different techniques and can manipulate many different aspects of an image. To go over all of these right now would take too much time, so we are going to focus on ISO.

So what is ISO? Technically, it stands for the International Organization of Standardization, but that doesn’t concern us.

For the purposes of practicing photography, ISO is the relationship between light and quality of your photo. To expose more light, you must edit the photo, which creates digital noise or grain in the photo. To get the clear and crisp photo everyone wants, you need a lower ISO; however, this leads to less light.

If that didn’t make sense, it can be put simpler:

A higher ISO means more light, but bad quality.

A lower ISO means less light, but good quality.

When you take a picture you need to expose the image properly so your camera can process it. The best way to judge how to expose your image is to first identify what your subject is, once you do that, you can change the ISO accordingly.

For example, if you are taking a picture of a sunset, you need to have a lower ISO. The large amounts of light from the sun provide ample lighting.

As an added example, if you are taking a picture of a dark room changing the ISO would brighten the image and reveal more detail. That being said, if you did increase the ISO, then the image would be so grainy and would appear as though it were taken on an iPod nano.

To conclude, ISO refers to the amount of light the camera attempts to portray. Adjusting your exposure can create wonderful photos when done correctly. To understand how to do that, you must be able to understand your true subject.

P.S: As a general rule, you should keep your ISO as low as possible and use other techniques to draw out the light. As of now, we don’t know any others, but it will all make sense in the end!

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– Michael Magnotti

Part-time writer, Michael Magnotti, thrives on leading passionate people to see the world in different ways. Although Michael writes about very different topics, he uses them all as an easy-to-read guide for seeing what you didn’t know was there!

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A current trend amongst the youth of calling themselves a “photographer” because they take good Instagram photos portrays photography as simply a hobby but negates the careers of many esteemed photographers.

Therefore, one must ask the question on everyone’s minds: Then what makes a photographer?

Personally, I believe a photographer to be someone who views the world with the untrained eye, understands how each subject interacts with each other, and captures the moment or the feeling use technical knowledge of the camera. Essentially, a photographer does not take a picture but creates one. Photography is not about taking a picture (you just push a button to do that), it’s about telling a story or transferring emotion.

To explain, some people want to take good quality photos so they buy a good quality camera, but they keep it on Auto mode. As you can see from the photo above, most cameras contain many different settings (Which we will get into eventually).  Even iPhones have multiple settings such as customizable aperture size, shutter speed, and exposure.

I’m sure you’re wondering why I’m focusing so much on utilizing the different photo modes. I’m stressing the importance of defining a photographer because I have a mission for this blog: in the next five to six posts, I can promise you will be off auto mode and possibly shooting on a primarily manual.

In my opinion, a photographer utilizes the tools and settings within the camera to manipulate what is captured. The three main attributes of a camera are the ISO (Brightness), F stop(Aperture size), and Shutter speed.

In order to make my point, let’s look at an example from Photo Editing India.

One could train a monkey to take the before picture. Fun fact, a scientist trained an octopus in New Zealand to take photos of tourists. However, it takes a creative mind and photographic knowledge to create the photo on the right.

The photographer of this photo, most likely, understood the interaction between the sun and the sand (the sand amplifies the sunlight). Therefore, he or she underexposed the photo in order to bring back the detail later in photoshop or some other photo editing software.

In addition to exposure, the photographer chose an appropriate shutter speed for the photo. Because the model is walking, a faster shutter speed is required to reduce blur. Because shutter speed and exposure change the brightness of the photo, it is very possible the photographer changed the aperture size to compensate for the lightness or darkness.

In conclusion, photography is a hobby but a photographer understands how the world and his or her camera work together to create a photo. Three main tools a photographer might use are Exposure, Aperture size, and Shutter speed. I hope this first post inspires you to get excited to learn as much as it inspires me to help you on your way!

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– Michael Magnotti

Part-time writer, Michael Magnotti, thrives on leading passionate people to see the world in different ways. Although Michael writes about very different topics, he uses them all as an easy-to-read guide for seeing what you didn’t know was there!

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