3
lighting
We all grow up with a ‘point and click’ experience of taking photographs. When we do this we are still making lots of creative choices about what to photograph, when, what we include in the frame and what we take out, angles, shadows and so on.
There’s a whole other world to explore when you start to experiment with shutter speed, aperture and choices of the ISO of your sensor in a digital camera or film in a traditional camera.
You don’t have to know much to make a start. As well as having more control of an image you also learn to see your photographs much more intensely. Developing your eye and how closely and in what detail you see is a vital step on the way to being a professional photographer.
Shutter Speed
You can think of this as how much time you allow for the image to be taken. A fast speed catches a fast moment - an instant at its fastest. A slower speed is capable of capturing movement in time. When you see a photograph of car light streaked down an image of a road you know a slow shutter speed has captured the movement of the cars. Very fast speed is used to photograph sprinters for example.
Aperture
Think of the aperture on your camera as being like the pupil in your eye. The smaller the aperture the less light is allowed in; the larger the aperture the more light.
You can look up theories ad advice on line. But I think the best way to learn is to set up your own experiment and see what effects you can achieve.
Maybe keep one setting the same aperture, and experiment with a number of different shutter speeds of the same subject. Then reverse and fix shutter speed but change aperture.
See what happens and have fun.