Rethink

Photography is a profession and you will certainly notice that with the settings of your camera. Aperture, shutter speed and ISO, it certainly looks familiar. But yes, how exactly do you apply that? Because every situation calls for different settings.

That is where the problem really lies. Because we are often tempted to ask about those settings of someone else. Only if we apply it ourselves then the photo is never as good as the photo of the other one.

That was certainly the case with the shoot in the Perfect Picture, where the dogs caught the kibble. Many people tried to recreate the photos with the same settings, but unfortunately, none of the photos were sharp.

A few weeks later we had dog Donut (who was photographed by Georgina in the Perfect Picture) in the studio and I explained why the settings work perfectly in the studio but not outside.

That's why I don't attach any value to someone else's settings, because if I wanted to recreate this photo, I would need completely different settings. There are so many factors involved that it would be too simple to adopt the settings blindly.

To better understand the concept of aperture, shutter speed and ISO, you may need to THINK. Sounds a bit like a buzzword, but it can really help here.

Let me explain:

On a birthday you will not easily hear uncle Piet say "What a nice shutter speed" or "Great aperture here". Probably something like "Nice that speed in the photo" or "This photo has so much depth".

If we start to think this way ourselves, we might better understand what we are doing:

By using your aperture you bring more depth to your photo. So in the following situation, don't think about how you should have your aperture, but how much depth you want in your photo and then play around with your aperture until you actually get this sense of depth in your photo.

Do you want to have speed in your photo? Or freeze your fast subject in time? Think of speed instead of shutter speed.

If you have a good idea of ​​the speed you want in your photo. Or how frozen you want your subject to be, then you can play with the shutter speed until you have the exact effect you want to achieve.

And then ISO? Because you can't see that, at least, you can only see the consequences, usually the noise. But ISO is amplification of light. Do you have too little light and therefore blurred photos (inside or outside when it gets darker)?

Then you have to amplify the light with ISO until your photo is sharp.

So my advice is to stop copying the camera settings from others and then hope for good results. And start thinking about it and adjust the settings step by step so that you get the result you have in mind.

This means that you often need several photos and work step by step towards that perfect picture.