Controlling Aperture And Shutter: For The First Time

On Wednesday, I received my loaned Canon Rebel XT SLR  for the photojournalism class at UNC-Chapel Hill this semester.   On Thursday, I learned 175 ways not to combine shutter and aperture settings.

Oh, it was horrible. Washed out, blurred images, you name it, I’m sure I did it wrong.  You’d have never known anyone was on the other side of the camera based on the final exposures.

I have been a point and shoot kind of person,  love the automation, and instant gratification.  But now, the task at hand: take one image that’s in focus while selecting the settings.

So, I ventured out, SLR in hand,  with an idea of my composition, but no skill to achieve the exposure.  And I do emphasize SKILL.  I have great respect for photographers who shoot on the manual mode, especially the one’s who nail the shot time after time.

A few of my favorite photographers who always seem nail it are Stacy Borelli, Shane Snider,  Christobal Perez, Chad A. Stevens and Jock Lauterer (the last two are UNC-CH professors.)

I read about the panning technique in one of my textbooks and wanted to try it.  My results are below… you can imagine my surprise, they were actually decent photos.