How does all this stuff work?

Once upon a time...

Years ago, I did a bit of serious video work in the past, working for a video production company that mainly did commercial product videos using broadcast level camera and tape systems. The company also did some videos for ballet, motocross racing, and nature videos. I mention this because I gained experience in composition, focus, white balance, editing, and more. I understood, or at least had exposure to, some of the terminology and technology used in digital photography.

But I hadn't manually controlled exposure before - most of the video shooting was using automatic settings, sometimes with manual focus. The DSLR presented some new opportunities and challenges.

My wife suggested I take a camera class and I considered it, but so far I haven't done it. I've found the web contains a vast amount of free information on photography and I avail myself of a lot of it. I have also found some co-workers / friends that have experience in photography, one of them has done photography since the 1970's and owned a photography related business for 10 years.

In addition to the manuals that came with my camera and equipment, I've also purchased AND READ a few books on photography which have helped immensely.
I'm certainly no expert on photography but I have learned a few things in the past few months and thought I'd share the trail of my progress so far.

Baby steps

Before I even got my camera I was reading about taking pictures. I knew I wanted to do a few things that I couldn't with my point and shoot Kodak. I wanted to take pictures of moving water like creeks where they were "silky" - which required controlling the shutter speed. I wanted to take pictures where part of it was in focus but other parts weren't, like a blurry background - which required controlling the aperture. I wanted to take pictures where there was a large contrast range. I wanted better color and sharper pictures. Basically, all this meant I needed a camera with full manual control of the settings.

In my wadings of the internet, one book was mentioned a number of times as a good source of information on the technical aspects of exposure: Understanding Exposure, 3rd Edition by Bryan Peterson. So, I bought it.

I got this early in my adventure and I learned a lot from it. It inspired me to shoot some of the pictures I've shot since and that I've got a lot of comments on. I recommend this book for someone starting out as well as for someone who wants a bit of inspiration if they're not getting it anywhere else.

I like Understanding Exposure because it doesn't have a lot of silly attempts at jokes nor condescending language. I like the way the material is presented; it doesn't have a lot of mentioning something only to ask you to jump to a different page to understand it. The content is presented linearly but in logical sections in each chapter. You can read chapters out of order if desired but there is enough building upon the previous chapters that, for first time readers anyway, it seems better to me to read the book in order, from start to finish.

When I finished the book I was actually wishing for more. But I think it really covers the basics of exposure and includes some additional information such as on HDR.

After reading the book you should have a good realization that, for getting an image recorded properly, there are really only three things to worry about: the f-stop or aperture, the shutter speed, and the ISO. Beyond that are focus, composition, lighting, etc. But the basics of taking a picture are those three things, the triangle or tripod for a good image capture. You need to get all three of those settings working in harmony, or at least to the extent that they cause the sensor to capture your vision of a good image!

Besides that book I got a number of old film photography books that I enjoyed. They talked about things that are available in image processing software such as dodging and burning which I had a hard time finding information about online, or at least that I understood. I got a good history of cameras and more information about depth of field. The books are probably none that are available anywhere so I'm not going to mention their names here.

Software Books

I also got some books related to the software I have:

Real World Nikon Capture NX 2 by Ben Long

Photoshop Elements 12 For Dummies

Photoshop Elements 12: The Missing Manual
Adobe Photoshop CC for Photographers

Although the software has help of some form (online or locally on your computer), I like the books better. The two Photoshop Elements 12 are Kindle versions; the other two are hard copy. These books have some information about picture taking, if you read between the lines, but they're almost exclusively geared towards using the software.

Magazines

I also want to mention that I subscribe to Outdoor Photographer magazine. For what I want to shoot, it has a lot of good information. I have the Kindle version which is cool. I can take the mag and the Kindle books with me on the Kindle when I'm camping. (I also have the extended Nikon user guide on my Kindle).

Where I'm at now

I've got a lot of insight out of the books that I wouldn't have gotten simply by poking around. I've actually re-read a good portion of all of them. If you're still young and can read, assimilate, and retain information easily from web sources, there is definitely information out there. However, by reading the books I get exposed to things I wouldn't have even known how to ask Google about so for me, and old school type of dude, the books are great.

The next step

Now I'm looking for material to help me expand artistically. That seems to be where I lack the most. Not that I've got all the exposure stuff down (as I was reminded in my recent Chiricahua excursion), but I understand (sort of) what I do wrong there and how to fix it (at least in theory). What I don't see as much as I wished I did was how to find something interesting in almost everything I could take a picture of. Sure, a flower might be pretty or colorful, but how can you frame it in the camera in a new or unique way in order to make someone else HAVE to look at it or HAVE to comment on it? That's what I want to do next.