The Trinity of Exposure is a quick guide to how to tame the parts of exposure and get the shot you want.

• Shutter Speed and Aperture = the amount of light captured resulting in how light or dark your picture will be. This needs to be balanced to the lighter areas are not blown out resulting in flat images with little details and conversely not so dark that a sunny day looks gloomy and moody.

• Aperture and ISO = the depth of field or what part of the scene will be in focus and how much of the background will be blurry thus isolating the subject and making a better picture, usually. A large aperture results in a shallow depth of field and is good for still life and portraits. A small aperture is good for landscapes and when you want every crisp and in focus.

• Shutter Speed and ISO = How moving objects are capture in time. Fast shutter speeds like 1/125, 1/250 and faster will freeze a moving subject like a running child or a race car. Slow shutter speeds like 1/8, 1/2 and slower will create motion bur and give a sense of speed and action. Note: you will need to stabilize your camera on a tripod or something else or you will create unwanted blur from you own hand not being to be stable enough for the length of time needed to capture some slower motion objects.

Feel free to copy the image about for your own use or download this high-res JPG below.

Here are the three steps and the order in which to apply them. It really is this simple.

• Know the subject
• Focus attention
• Simplify

1 – Know the Subject
When your getting ready to take a picture, take a moment to think about what exactly you are taking a picture of. Is it your family or the landscape behind them? Is it your child playing with their favorite toy or the whole backyard? Many people take pictures without looking at the surrounding distractions. Check out the picture below and you will see what I mean. What is this a picture of? Is it the tower, the whole building or that palm tree? What can we do improve this picture?

2 – Focus attention
Let’s use the above picture as an example for the next step. We need to choose what will be the focus of the attention of the photograph. I really liked all the architectural details in the tower, so let’s make that the focus for this picture. There are many way to focus attention such as use of lighting, framing the subject with another object, selective focus or my favorite, moving around the scene to find a different and interesting angle.

3 – Simplify
The above image has way too objects in the frame so we need to get rid of all those things that are taking our viewers attention away from the tower. What I decided to do was move around the corner of the street a bit for a better angle, I zoom in a bit and waited for the clouds to silhouette the cone shape of the tower, lastly and I added a bit of post-production work. We will get into that later. Below is the outcome of following the three steps. I don’t think I will win any awards, but I do like the picture and it much better.

A a quick review the steps are: 1 – Know the subject, 2 – Focus attention and 3 – Simplify. Practice does makes perfect, but if you try to use these ideas your pictures will instantly take on a more dramatic and memorable aspect and you will enjoy the outcome, I promise. It’s that simple.

Please post any of your ideas or comments in the box below. Thanks.

• Aperture

Aperture is an opening (called an iris) in the lens that can be adjusted in size to control the amount of light that enters through the lens and is captured by either film or the digital sensor. The aperture size is represented by numbers and written with the letter f followed by a slash and the f-number. These are referred to as f-stops. Now here is the weird and confusing part, the smaller the number the larger the aperture opening and the bigger the number the smaller the aperture opening. Here is a list of the basic numbers: f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11, f/16, f/22 You will something see different numbers because these f-stops can also be stated in half stops.

• Shutter speed

When you take a picture, the shutter snaps open and closed and allows light to enter through the aperture in the lens. Shutter speed refers to how long the shutter remains open and is measured in seconds and fractions of a second. The slower the shutter speed, the more light the sensor soaks up and conversely the faster the shutter speed the less light enters into the camera but a fast shutter speed will freeze motion.

• ISO rating

The ISO ratings is used to indicate the light sensitivity of the digital image sensor. The most common numbers are 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600, 3200… The higher the number, the greater the light sensitivity and the less light is required to expose the image. But beware, the higher the ISO number the more grain or noise you will have in an image. This is one of the factors that you pay more for in professional level cameras. With a better (and more expensive) image sensor you can crank up the ISO and still get clean pictures with little or no noise. This lets you take pictures in lower lighting and still freeze the action on not get blurry night time shots.

Now most point and shoot cameras handle most of these settings for you with autoexposure, where the camera chooses the aperture size and shutter speed. DLSR (digital single lens reflex) offer a few options beyond manual mode. These are called aperture priority and shutter priority modes. These mode let you choose either the aperture or shutter and the camera chooses the rest.

These three things (aperture, shutter speed and ISO) control how your picture will be exposed and if you have a keeper or chance to do it again.

If you have any questions or have and comments, please post them below.

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