shutter & aperture

What's up girlie.

I LOVE this picture. Andy drew this bicycle with a blacklight pen while I held the shutter open (f-5.6). It only took him 16 seconds and this was his first try. I was like "Oh my god, you definitely know bicycles if you are able to draw a perfect one like that in the pitch black." You can see I didn't use a tripod by those fuzzy red and yellow marks... our vcr lights :)

Anyway, the reason we were playing around like this was because my sister was over and showed me her blacklight pen. I thought it would be fun to try to draw some images with a long shutter speed in the dark, and we had a blast. She drew everything from bunnies to noodle bowls, and this profound message:

"Fudge is good."
She really cut to the chase on that one.

We got my mom involved too--she drew a bumblebee:

And then I rounded out the night with a few apples in different stages of being eaten:

I ended up teaching my sister the very basics of what an aperture and shutter are made to do.
Both are features of a camera that control how much light exposes the film (or in this day, how much light reaches your sensor...)
The aperture is a hole that can be made larger or smaller to let in more or less light.
The shutter acts like a door--you choose how long to keep that door open. Leaving it open longer lets in more light; leaving it open for a very short amount of time means less light gets in.
As a photographer, you have to set the aperture and shutter to work in conjunction in order to get the right exposure.

Like I said, super basic. So in teaching her this, I realized that I have A LOT of brushing up to do. I didn't even get into how depth-of-field factors into all this (although that would be hard to explain to a 10 yr old...).

One thing I am so grateful for is to FINALLY HAVE A DSLR! I can play around with aperture and shutter speed and white balance and focusing settings and snap, Snap, SNAP! to my heart's content--and all I have to do is recharge my battery and make sure I don't fill up my memory card (not a problem so far). No trips to Long's or Bay Photo or anything! I just get to learn and review the images and delete them. I am starting to see the limitations of the equipment I have, though (which sucks because I thought the purchase of my dslr would make instantly fabulous photos...). I need to begin looking for more lighting equipment. I have a tripod but it's pretty bulky.

My goals for this moment are to plan a shoot and follow through with that. Sabrina seems to be my best bet for that because she is used to being in front of the camera. I think she will be very patient with me and plus she is just so beautiful!
I also really need to get my website up and running. It's not too expensive to own the domain but seriously, it has been empty for like 3 months. WTF AM I DOING?!?!? sheeesh.

I'd love to see you rent out some equipment from your work and get down to it! Your pics would definitely snazz-ify our site.
<3
muah!