Photography Exam

Subject matter

The ‘what’ of photography, placed into three groups (still life, landscape and portrait)

Landscape photography

Focuses on a place and what makes it unique (natural, artificial, outdoors/indoors, day/night)

Portrait photography

Photographing a person with the intent of capturing things such as facial expression/features, personality, etc.

Still life photography

Everyday objects photographed in a way that makes them more interesting or engaging

Composition

The way various components within a photograph are arranged, ‘how’ we photograph the subject matter

Rule of thirds

Divide your frame into thirds both horizontally and vertically, placing the subject matter on the points where the lines intersect

Frame within a frame

Focuses on using natural borders within the image to frame the subject matter

Cropping

Excluding a part of the subject matter from the overall photo to create a more visually interesting photo

Art elements

Line, shape, colour, tone, texture, form, time

Art principles

Balance, unity, contrast, rhythm, emphasis/focal point, scale, space, variety, proportion, movement, repetition

Depth of field (aperture and f-stops)

refers to how much of an image is in focus, controlling depth of field by adjusting the aperture on your camera lens (shallow depth of field achieved with a low f-stop number 1.4-5.6)

Aperture

refers to the hole inside a lens that allows light in (a photographer the amount of light let in via adjusting the f-stops along with the shutter speed)

F-stops

The name for the different sized aperture holes (works similar to human pupil - bright sunshine our pupils are small (F.22), dark lighting our pupils are large (F 2.8)) The larger the F-stop, the larger the depth of field, smaller the F-stops, the shallower the depth of field).

Smaller apertures (F.22 and F.16)

Large depth of field, meaning the vast majority of the image will be in sharp focus

Larger apertures (F2.8)

Small or shallow depth of field, meaning only part of that picture that is being focused on will be in sharp focus

Shutter speed

Is all about timing, we use this dial as well as the aperture ring to control the amount of lighting entering the camera. It affects the sharpness of moving objects in a picture. This dial affects how “quick” the little shutter curtains open and close to let light onto the film or digital sensor.

A fast shutter speed (1/125 and above) can…

freeze movement

A slow shutter speed (1/30 and below) can…

blur moving objects

When shooting anything below 1/60 of a second you may need to…

use a tripod or steady surface to avoid camera shake

panning

moving the camera during exposure to follow a moving object, adding movement to the background of a picture

Types of lighting

natural light, artificial light

The ISO

of our camera indicates the sensitivity of our film or camera sensor. Like the shutter, ISO is measured in speeds, with a fast ISO being 800 or higher and a slower one being around 200

A faster ISO

is more sensitive and allows us to shoot in lower light settings however can make the image grainy

A slower ISO

is less sensitive and can make an image appear smooth

Overexposing (+) will

lighten a photo

Underexposing (-) will

darken a photo

layers

… are stacked on top of each other, with alterations or editing affecting each layer below

layer masks

… allow us to make adjustments to certain parts of an image without affecting the rest

brush tools

… are used for painting in layer masks (can be adjusted in size, softness or hardness)

sharpening

digital images appear with a built-in fuzziness, and this tool is used to fix this

curves

Are similar to layers in that they adjust highlights, shadows, and midtones, however can also be used to make adjustments to the colours in our image. The lines on this graph can either be moved up or down to achieve these results.

levels

this layer is a lot like the exposure slider in Camera Raw, as it allows us to make adjustments to our shadows, highlights, and middle grey by moving the 3 toned markers along the scale.

photoshop

is the main tool for editing digital photos