Photography Lesson #2 ~ Aperture Basics (she: Nicole)

Aperture was really hard for me to understand at first. I am going to try and put this in the most simple terms I know how. You all know that little circle inside your lens that opens and shuts? That is your aperture. That little circle is determining how much light enters your camera. Today for part 1 we are going to talk about how much light you want coming into the camera. If too much light enters the camera the photo will be OVEREXPOSED, TOO BRIGHT, or BLOWN OUT. The higher the aperture the less light you are letting into the camera. The lower the aperture the more light you are letting into the camera. On your camera the way aperture is displayed is in f. so for example it will say f/1.8.

Most photographers take pictures either early morning right before the sun comes up or late evening right before it goes down. Lighting is great at those times. My absolute favorite time to take photos is on a cloudy day. The clouds act as a filter for the sun so you can still get beautiful lighting, but the lighting is soft and limits shadows. 

You will notice in this post I repeat myself!  I apologize in advance, but for me repetition was the best way to finally get into this little head of mine how aperture works. If you are going to be taking photos on a sunny day you are going to want your aperture to be higher.  This means that circle inside your lens is getting smaller and not allowing so much light to come into your camera. If you do this you wont get OVEREXPOSED photos. This is where it started getting confusing to me at first.  Our brilliant minds usually think if the numbers are getting higher the lens opening should get larger. Right? NOPE!  As far as aperture goes, it is opposite! Let’s say we don’t have a lot of light outside… What do we do with that little circle???  You Are Right! We want to to lower your aperture making the circle in your lens larger. This will let more light into your lens and your pictures won’t come out dark.