Lecture 2

Lecture was more than fun because a guest speaker came to speak to us about manipulating the exposure of a camera to create optimal results in photo-taking. Our guest speaker was Lionel, and it was a little odd to see him speak to the entire class because he used to be my tutorial classmate when we took NM2208 together. Nonetheless, he carried himself well and spoke with a lot of confidence, like a true, professional photographer!

He spoke to us, mainly, about the Exposure Triangle. The Exposure Triangle comprised of 3 elements - ISO sensitivity, aperture and shutter speed, and each of the elements controls an aspect of the way a camera reacts to light. He also showed us photographs of varying degrees of exposure. He taught us the logic behind the aperture, shutter speed and ISO's number values, and how adjusting each one had different results. He also taught us how to balance between aperture and shutter speed to create shots of deep and shallow depths of field, motion blur and freeze action. And then he touched on how ISO determined how "grainy" our photos were going to turn out. All these were vital information, as they related to our first assignment of the module, which was capturing photographs of deep depth of field (DDOF), shallow depth of field (SDOF), motion blur and freeze action.

When the assignment was given out to us, I had a basic idea of what I wanted for the deep and shallow depth of field shots. Changi Airport was ideal for such shots; the architectural patterns and tessellation within the terminals would help enhance the "layering" within the photograph, making the foreground, mid-ground and background more distinct. Previous experiences of going to the airport and taking photographs taught me so. The tricky ones were the blur motion and freeze action shots. I had no experience in taking these shots, so I knew I would need more time to experiment with movement and camera possibilities.