Trip to Mackinac and the U.P.

Fish

Lens: AF-S DX VR Zoom-Nikkor 18-55mm, f/5.6. Shutter: 1/400 ISO: 100

Photography Basics: Shooting in Aperture Priority

Photography Basics: Shooting in Aperture Priority

For someone just starting out in the art of photography, much like Ann and I, there is a massive amount of information on the technique of shooting photos. There are also plenty of tutorials that are dedicated to the subject in a step by step fashion. You can read plenty of articles and guides, but there are only a few things that you really need to know before you can start taking great pictures. Now, we definitely consider ourselves beginners, but after we learned these 3 basic concepts, it all makes so much sense now!

1. Aperture

Aperture is defined by webster's as "the opening in a photographic lens that admits the light."
Aperture is also the main controller of depth of focus.

Depth of focus basically means, how much of the background is in focus. Because of the way the optics in the lens are set up, the larger the aperture, the smaller the depth of focus. Conversely, the smaller the aperture, the larger the depth of focus, meaning more things will be in focus in the background of the subject you're shooting!

So, as aperture increases, things in the background get blurrier, and vice versa.
Lenses typically describe the aperture settings by their "f-stop". A low f-stop means a high aperture.
Lower f-stops give you better depth of focus, as well as give you more flexibility for low-light settings.

Here are a few photos with different aperture settings:

f/14 low aperture

f/4 high aperture

2. ISO

ISO is short for international standards organization. When referring to the ISO setting of a camera, it basically means how sensitive the image sensor is at a particular setting.
The higher the number, the more sensitive the image sensor is to light, thus requiring less light to expose the picture.

High ISO numbers:
- Good for dark settings, action shots indoors
- Bad for outside photography and also noticeably grainy

Low ISO numbers:
- Good for outdoor shooting, much softer in contrast to higher numbers
- Bad for low light settings

Here are a few photos with different ISO settings:

High ISO - 1600

Low ISO - 100

3. Exposure Compensation

The only other thing you should worry about when shooting in aperture priority is the exposure. Typically while shooting, we will leave it at 0.0 and take a few test shots to see if we need to adjust it up or down. A good way to check is to view the histogram of the photo. If either of the ends of the histogram are hitting the top of the graph, most likely it's under or overexposed.

Bags and Dogs

Shot this whilst playing a game of bags with my Nikon 55-200mm zoom lens, manual focus:

Nikon 55-200mm.  It took a few tries to get a sharp focus on the bag, but eventually I did and it turned out nicely.

I especially like this one because of the contrast of the bag to the sky. Makes it look like it’s floating.

Shot this portrait of our dog Hazel with our Nikon 28mm 2.8D wide angle lens:

Nikon 28mm 2.8D 

I find Hazel to be a great target for practice  : )

This photo was taken by Ann with the same lens as above. It was a fairly clear evening at Stoney Creek and we were able to get a few pictures of this great sunset. The contrast really makes the photo stand out, especially with the people in the bottom right of the frame.

This one reminds me of the movie “Independence Day” for some reason, but it’s a great photo. It captures the stray light rays nicely.

This should belong in the Ann Arbor Art Fair post, but I neglected to include it. The paint color instantly drew me to the bike, so I thought it was necessary to include it somewhere on the site.

Sailboats and stuff

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to take a 3 hour tour of the Grosse Pointe shoreline. Fortunately, the 3 hour tour did not end on a desert island … hardy har. Anyway, the point of this tour was to celebrate a family member’s recently spoken nuptials and it just happened to be on a boat (pronounced yacht). While on this yacht, a sailboat race was concurrently being held off the G.P. shore.

I was able to snap this photo of my dad while we made our way through this ongoing sailboat race. I like the picture because it means many different things to me. Even though the sky is somewhat menacing, the smile on his face is one of reassurance. Throughout life, he has always been the one to assure my brothers and me that everything would be alright. When I look at this picture, I am instantly at peace with my surroundings.



 Looking forward : )

 

Prior to boarding the yacht, we sat in an area fairly close to the water and waited for the bride and groom to walk down the aisle and start the ceremony. I shot these mostly to capture the activity prior to the actual event.

I especially like the old-timey mic that was used. I believe it’s the Shure® deluxe ’55 vocal mic which aurally speaking, adds a bit of that old-timey warmth that correlates with the era in which it was introduced.

Other than the wedding, I’ve only had a handful of opportunities to take photos so I thought I’d share them and call them “stuff” in this post.

We had an extra fortune cookie from some Pei Wei one day a few weeks ago, so I thought I’d get creative and set up a shot. It was somewhat coincidental that the fortune on the inside related to the intent of the photo.

I was getting home from something I had going on one day during the week, and I immediately noticed that the moon was a great orangey/yellow color so I ran upstairs, grabbed my camera and tripod and rushed back down to snap some pictures. It took me a few tries to get the exposure and the focus right, but what I ultimately did to get a sharp focus and a good exposure was use the timer function on my Nikon D3100. Because my tripod is not the sturdiest, using the timer allowed me to limit the amount of movement the camera would experience. I think it turned out pretty good. 

Ann Arbor Art Fair

yesterday, we walked through the crowds of people in ann arbor during the annual art fair. it was a beautiful day for taking pictures and for people-watching. we parked away from downtown to avoid a fee and we walked a few blocks until we hit the ann arbor brewing company. 

i ordered their IPA which was quite tasty. ann had a blonde wheat ale which she also enjoyed thoroughly. as a sample, we tried the smoked ale which we were told was brewed with bacon. it definitely smelled and tasted like bacon : ) it was interesting...

for my meal, i ordered chicken tacos with a jalapeno lime salsa. quite delicious. i think that the next time we visit ann arbor, we'll be making a stop at the arbor brewing company for some food and refreshing beverages : )