Aperture, Shutter Speed, and My Kid.

So this week I am the guest photographer at Digital Scrapbook Memories and I am teaching a lesson on aperture and shutter speed. GO CHECK IT OUT to get the lesson in full. Here are my examples (click on them to make them bigger and see just what I am talking about).

If you want to get creative with your photography, the first thing I like to do is change up the aperture, or f-stop. When you lower your f-stop number, the background of your image becomes blurrier. The higher the number, the more in focus the background is. When you have a background you don't particularly like, a quick and easy thing to do is set your camera on aperture priority (usually the setting is Av or A on the dial) and make that number setting as low as you can (most cameras can go down to around f/3.5 or even lower). The shutter speed will be set automatically so you don't have to worry about figuring it out.

And when you want to stop motion or create motion blur, you want to change up the shutter speed. You can do this easily by setting your camera to SHUTTER priority (Tv or S on most camera dials). Usually a shutter speed above 1/250 (which stands for one two-hundred fiftieth of a second) will sufficiently stop most motion. Most people can hold a camera steady at 1/125 or even down to 1/60. If you go lower than that you will probably end up with a little camera shake unless you have a realllllly steady hand, or you are using a tripod. You can see by clicking on the image above the different shutter speeds I used. My favorite is the last one with the motion blur.

Lots more to learn if you want to check it out! The class just got started last week so it will be easy to catch up. AND IT IS FREE. :)

Oh and yes. That is my son, riding his red bike. The same one he wouldn't dare try before. He got on this puppy a day after mastering the yellow bike and hasn't looked back since.