Foto Friday: Composition And Aperture (And FREE Software!)
Date: Friday September 7, 2007Posted in: Foto Friday, Photography
The response to my suggestion for Foto Fridays has been overwhelming (comments and emails and phone calls, oh my!). The only problem is that I feel pretty under qualified. I feel like someone who doesn’t even know how to send an email (Hi Mom!) about to lead a session on how to do WordPress-y things on your blog (Hi Heather!).
The mantra is to “write what you know”, so I will write about what (limited) knowledge I have about photography. First, a disclaimer:
I AM NOT A WRITER OR PHOTOGRAPHER BY TRADE. I AM A CHARTERED ACCOUNTANT WHO POSTS DRIVEL ABOUT HER KIDLETS AND TAKES A BILLION PHOTOS OF THEM DAILY IN THE HOPES THAT I GET *ONE* GOOD SHOT.
Before I get completely technical, I thought I should touch on what you are actually taking a photograph of. Whenever I come across a magazine article about how to take better photos, they talk about photo composition. There are a number of things to keep in mind when composing a photo.
Maybe I should touch on one composition aspect per week, and one technical aspect (This is assuming this is not the only Foto Friday that I do). Does that sound like a good idea? Let me know.
Composition: It’s all about the background.
We had family come to visit in July. They were gracious enough to offer to watch all three kids so that Matthew and I could have a hot date night. Since he and I were all gussied up I asked my sister Dayna to take a few photos of us next to a nice tree in our backyard. She snapped away and then handed me the camera to see if I was happy with them. Here’s one that made me smile, but there was a bit of an issue with it.
There is a primary-coloured jungle gym growing out of my back! Send help!
Totally not Dayna’s fault. She just took the photo I asked her to. I pulled Matthew over to a different location and handed the camera back to Dayna. Isn’t the background much less distracting (except for the branch growing out of Matthew’s head)?
Though my bare back may be even more distracting. I almost look naked here, thanks to that halter back. I assure you I was not naked. I do not pose for those types of photos. You should all be thankful for that. I know I am.
I am constantly stopping to toss useless pieces of plastic crap toys off of the lawn when I am outside with the kids and taking photos. Matthew likes to mock me endlessly tease me about it being “all about the background”. While it may not be all about the background (um, there’s the actual subject of the photo), the background can detract from the photo subject.
So what do you do if you have a photo that you like but there’s something growing out of your head? Or a jungle gym is about to pounce?
Do some editing.
Picasa is a FREE editing tool provided by Google. You can download it for FREE and do some great editing like changing from colour to black and white/sepia, etc. You can use it to remove red eye, to crop photos and so! much! more! And it’s FREE! Did I mention that it was FREE?
Take the first photo above. I wanted to use it in a post, so I cropped it and made it black and white. Like so.
Much better, in my humble opinion.
OK. Let’s get technical!
Aperture isn’t as confusing as it sounds. Really.
When I tried to wade my way through my photography book, the terminology about aperture made my head swirl. To a logical accounting brain, it seemed to make no sense whatsoever. Here is the technical low down, with the English translation directly afterwards.
The lens aperture is the size of the lens opening. The aperture determines the amount or intensity of light that hits the sensor. Aperture is shown as f-stop numbers (i.e. f/2.8, f/4, f/5.8, etcetera, etcetera).
Smaller f-stop numbers mean that the lens has a larger opening and that more light hits the sensor. Because THAT MAKES NO SENSE WHATSOEVER.
Larger f-stop numbers means that the lens has a smaller opening and that less light hits the sensor. Because THAT ALSO MAKES NO SENSE WHATSOEVER.
Aperture affects depth of field. WHAT ON EARTH is depth of field, you ask? Depth of field is basically the zone of focus around your subject. Still not making sense? I’m not surprised.
HERE IT IS IN ENGLISH.
I have a Canon, and not a Nikon (or any other brand). I tried to Google pictures of the Nikon, but couldn’t find pictures that showed the views of the controls. I will use my Canon as the example and hope it’s the same for the rest of you suckers.
Turn the Mode Dial on your camera to Av mode. While in the Av mode, you set the aperture using the Main Dial on the top right, and the camera does the rest of the settings for you. That’s why we’re using Av and not the fully Manual mode; because we have not covered the rest yet.
It is really, really simple. I PROMISE.
A small aperture (f-stop number) means that a smaller portion of your photo will be in focus with the rest of it being blurry (for closer subjects, like kids or flowers, etc).
Here is a photo of our wild flowers using a smaller f-stop number of 7.1.
Notice how the flower is in focus, but the background is blurry?
I then bumped the f-stop number up to f/16.
See how the other flowers are less blurry?
Our final f-stop. I set it to f/40.
You can see the other flowers!
To sum it up: the smaller the f-stop number for the aperture, the smaller the area that is in focus. The larger the f-stop number, the larger the area that is in focus.
THAT MAKES WAY MORE SENSE.
At least to me.
Did it make sense to you? That is the real question.
Was any of this helpful? Did a light bulb turn on above your head? Or was this a complete waste of your (and my) time?
I think this post may have ended up being too long. Should I not bother with the composition stuff?
I need feedback, people. I need to know if this was the first of many Foto Fridays.
Or if it was the first and last Foto Friday.
30 Comments
I also don’t like photos taking horizontally when they should be taken vertically. Like that one of you and your sweet love. Hello! A vertical, slightly off-centered to the right photo would have been loverly - just LOVERLY!
These are great! AND what a fabulous way to make aperture MAKE SENSE.
kudos momma!
Comment by OMSH on September 7th, 2007 @ 8:49 amGreat Post!
Keep up the Foto Fridays, I will definitly be playing with the apperture on my Canon now, I could not figure it out previously!
Comment by Leslie on September 7th, 2007 @ 10:15 amTutorial? What tutorial? I just learned to spell ETCETERA!
I kid, I kid…
(grabbing my camera now to fiddle with the f-stop.)
Comment by LVGurl on September 7th, 2007 @ 10:49 amThis was great. Not too long, and very very easy to understand. I can’t to try it all out. And I liked the composition part - leave that in! It was all really really helpful, thank you!
Comment by Elizabeth on September 7th, 2007 @ 10:54 amI really think you will potentially save my marriage. We bought this very pricey camera for our wedding (gift to each other) and I swore I’d read the manual! As soon as we got the camera! I’d be a manual-reading fool!
But the manual is a snoozefest, so I tossed it aside and read Glamour.
Now I have you! And I’m going to take awesome pictures and totally pretend I read the manual!
Isn’t that what all successful marriages are built on? Lies and help from fellow bloggers?
I thought so.
Comment by Jennie on September 7th, 2007 @ 11:14 amYou know I love this idea! I’m fiddling as I’m reading and just not seeing any blur. I’m sure I’m too stupid to figure it out or am just not reading the instructions right. Am I supposed to see the blur in my preview pane or just after I take the pic? *bangs head* I really want this to work. I’ll keep trying. Thanks though! I think you should keep it up!
Don’t hurt yourself! 
You won’t see it the difference in the viewfinder, just afterwards when you look at the picture. Pick one subject and take a series of photos while changing the f-stop. You should see the difference when you play them back
I love the composition stuff… I always have to crop to get the distracting background to a minimum. I just have a point and shoot though so the aperature (?) is lost on me
Your explanations made perfect sense though - you go girl!
Comment by Kami on September 7th, 2007 @ 12:15 pmgood stuff! That lightbulb went on for me on Tuesday, and I’m loving it!
Comment by Karen on September 7th, 2007 @ 1:25 pmGreat tutorial! More interesting than ones I’ve read before - you talked about your life and your family as well, which made it more “real”. I’m also constantly asking people to move to different places when I take their photos, because I’m also “all about the background”.
And I will never forget the day I found Picasa. IT ROCKS!
Comment by Hannah on September 7th, 2007 @ 2:33 pmI loved it Ange. You totally rocked the aperture. LOL!! It now makes sense, I will have to try it out whenever I finally get home. Keep up these FOTO Fridays, I may start to take photos as good as you. Who am I kidding? Thats not going to happen. LOL!!
Comment by Mel on September 7th, 2007 @ 4:31 pmThat made a lot of sense to me! And I LOVE Picasa!! I used it all the time until I discovered Paint Shop Pro. And the aperature? I’ve always wondered how people got the sweet blurry backgrounds - I gotta try that.
I vote for MORE Foto Fridays!!
Comment by Jen on September 7th, 2007 @ 6:50 pmUm wow, colour me a Foto Friday believer.
My camera? Yeah, it has this aperature of which you speak.
Cool.
Comment by Kami on September 7th, 2007 @ 7:10 pm‘I’m checking out your “Foto Fridays for dummies”. Thanks for the plain English.
Comment by SarahD on September 7th, 2007 @ 8:41 pmI just inherited a Rebel from my boyfriend and every time he has tried to explain aperature to I have only been able to stare at him blankly. Thanks for finally putting it a way I can understand!
Comment by Jenn on September 7th, 2007 @ 9:21 pmInteresting! I actually learned a lot there! Great post!
Comment by Michele on September 7th, 2007 @ 10:06 pmGood job on your first Foto Friday! I look forward to many more.
ok–you rock!! thanks for making sense of things for me! Keep up Foto Fridays and by the end of the year..I might know how to work my Rebel!!
Comment by anita on September 7th, 2007 @ 11:57 pmOMG! You explained how to do the fuzzy background thingy!!!! Just in time for my trip to the UK!!!! I’ve been pouring over the D70 manual all damn day trying to figure it out!
HEART YOU!
Comment by Loralee on September 8th, 2007 @ 1:21 am[...] to borrow the Nikon. I have been playing with it all day and I love it. Plus, thanks to her and her idiot-proof posts about moving away from the automatic function, I will hopefully have some kickin’ photos from the [...]
Comment by loraleeslooneytunes.com » Sideblog:Camera Decision on September 8th, 2007 @ 1:27 amI loved this tutorial. I hated our manual for our Canon and just searched the web for someone to put it into English and found it alot easier to get. I use PSP XI for photo editing. I downloaded the free trial and then just bought it cheaply online. You can do so many amazing things, from DOF, filters, textures etc…
Comment by kelly on September 8th, 2007 @ 8:33 amWeeeeeee! The blurry background! YAY! That’s one of my favourite effects! And good job explaining it. Keep up the Foto Fridays. You have been the only one in a year to be able to explain F-stop so that I retain the information past the point that the person stops talking. Weeeeeeeeee!
Comment by Shannon on September 8th, 2007 @ 2:57 pmI agree…great post!! I hope this Foto Friday is the first of many. I don’t have a fancy camera (although I would LOVE to get one, one day) but it is really fascinating to see/hear about the features on your camera, and to see how your photos come to look the way they do. Thumbs up!
I agree that you should do more foto fridays. You are a great teacher/explainer and it is so nice when you include examples from real life. We’re hoping to get a “real” camera for Christmas so for me it’s like pre-learning!
Comment by Amanda Franks on September 8th, 2007 @ 9:20 pmVery helpful. I think you should DEFINITELY keep doingthese. don’t disapoint your fans….also, come check out my latest entry. I am going to enter a photo contest and I have my potentialsubmisssions up there and I want readers to help me choose which ones I should enter (I can’t enter all of them).
Thanks and I’ll be back!
Good girl Ange! Way to apply what you’ve learned. Keep practicing it only gets better from here on in!
Comment by christy on September 9th, 2007 @ 1:37 pmFabulous! I’m going to be looking forward to Foto Fridays! We just got a new Canon last week and it’s all a little on the strange side to me. I’ve always had a point and shoot type of deal and even those at times seemed foreign.
Great works, thanks and keep it comin’
Um. You might want to reread your statement about posing for naked photos. I think you forgot the word “not”. Freudian slip? Methinks so.
Oops! Fixed. Phew!
Comment by Amanda on September 7th, 2007 @ 8:00 am