Photographic Terminology

Ashleigh Darlington

Unit 57: Photography and Photographic Practice TerminologyP1, P2, M1, M2

Shutter Speed

Shutter speed is how long the shutter on the camera lens stays open for as this will change the amount of light and exposure that will show up on the image that has been taken this is depending on the length of time that the shutter has been open for.

Shutter SpeedFast Shutter Speed Slow Shutter Speed

Iso

This is how sensitive a film is to light depending on what the ISO number is, a way to explain this is that the lower the number the lower the sensitivity and the finer the grain appears in the shots you are taking.

ISO

High ISO Low ISO

Aperture & Depth of Field

The way a subject looks in a photograph can sometimes look different from how it looked to you as you took the picture this is because when you look at a scene everything in it looks more or less equally sharp but sometimes in the finished shot only part of the subject appears sharp is called the depth-of-field, and it extends in front of and behind the point that you actually focused on.

Aperture & Depth of Field

Narrow Depth of Field Wide Depth of Field

Manual Exposure

When the camera is in manual mode the photographer adjusts the lens aperture and/or the shutter speed to achieve the exposure that they want.

Automatic Exposure

Exposure is the amount of light you allow to hit either an object or an area in the photograph you are taking. A camera in Automatic Exposure automatically calculates and adjusts the exposure settings to match the subjects mid tone to the mid tone of the object you are taking a picture of.

Colour BalanceColour is the global adjustment of the intensities of colours, an important goal of this adjustment is to render specific colours usually neutral colours. The general method is sometimes called gray balance, neutral balance or white balance.

The right half shows the photo adjusted to make a gray surface neutral in the same light.

White Balance

This is the process where you remove any unrealistic colours from the picture, this is to ensure that objects that appear for example white in person are rendered so that they still appear just as white in your picture.

CompositionComposition is the arrangement or placement of visual elements or ingredients that are in a photograph.

Rule of thirdsThis applies to the process of composing visual images it is not only used in photographs it can also be used in other things such as paintings and designs. The guideline says that an image should be imagined as being divided into nine equal parts by two equally spaced horizontal or vertical lines.

Examples of Rule of thirdsThe key interest points don’t always fall exactly on the intersections laid out in the grid although that is a rule it can be broken.

Analogous colours

These are colours that are next to each other on the colour wheel, these colours tend to look good together because they are closely related, these are colours like orange and yellow.

Complementary ColoursThese are pairs of colours that are classed as being opposite from each other. The exact of hue “complementary” to a given hue depends on the model in question for example having different compliments for different colours.

MacroThis is usually used for when you want to take pictures of very small objects as it is extreme close up photography so that the subject that has been photographed appears greater in the photograph than it is in real life.