1. Under Exposure

Under exposure is when not enough light comes through the lens. To do this, you can change the ISO to different exposure levels but there is a better way to get a fully under exposed image. This is achieved by taking making the shutter speed at a higher rate. The shutter speed is essentially how fast the shot is taken so the higher the shutter speed rate, the photo will capture at a dead stop. This is ideal for events such as a football match so you can capture the exact moment a ball is kicked or scored. The slower the shutter speed, the more movement that is capture so subject may become blurred. Less light will be able travel to through to the lens the higher the shutter speed because the shutter moves so fast. This shot was taken at 1/400 shutter speed so not a lot of light was able to come through the lens. Alternatively I could of put the ISO up to add exposure to the image but if I were ever to want to under expose an image for my photo essay, then I would use this technique. 

 2. Lights and Slow Shutter Speed

When the shutter speed is set a slower speed like putting it at 5" (5 seconds) like this photo then you can capture moving light in an interesting way. Because the shutter takes 5 seconds to shut in the process of taking a photo all movement is captured which then makes the subject blurred. Sometimes the actual subject disappears if they are travelling away because the camera does not have enough time to capture the subject but the lights it leaves are there as you can see the movement. A great example would be a moving car but with this photo, it is a flash light from a phone with the subject moving it around.

3. Over Exposure 

Over exposure is when the camera takes the light and uses too much of it. The ISO setting on the camera controls the exposure and how much light to use on each photo. Depending on the surrounding and what natural light is there, this depends on what setting you use. Setting the ISO to 100 would be best suited for very sunny conditions (commonly known as the Spanish film) as it does not use much of the light. Whereas, an ISO of 6400 would be used for pitch black conditions so the camera grabs any light and exposes it to the max. Each number holds a different level where you would have to decide what ISO to use, typically for English conditions, ISO 400 would be ideal although you can use ISO AUTO which is a very good setting where the camera decides what ISO to set it to depending on where you point the camera. Alternatively, I may wish to over expose an image with intent and I can do this by setting the ISO to 6400 like I have done with this photo and it over exposes the image.

4. ISO 6400 

I took two of the same photos (photos 4 and 5) with different exposure levels. The natural light was very dark so I turned the ISO up to 6400 so it took what little light there was and intensified it. This would be the correct way to use ISO if you did not want to over sexpose or under expose an image.

5. ISO 100

Setting the ISO to 100 makes the camera think that there is already a lot of light in the surrounding area so when I set it this way, it just captures the natural light where there is not a lot.

6. Flash

I used flash for this photograph and although I do not think that I will be using this technique in my photo essay because it would look too amateur and like a Facebook photo. Nevertheless, it's a technique that I need to know about so I took the same photo with flash where a light flashes just before the photo is taken and it lit up the area quite well but it would be hard to analyse and explain this is my photo essay.

7. Above

When taking photos, there is a technique know as the above shot. You go above the subject to create meaning such as dominance or use it as a trick of the camera technique. With this picture, my subject is the water fountain where the camera is placed above the subject.

8. Below

Alternatively, you could have the camera placed below the subject and this could create a feeling of inferiority or insecurities. To do this with the same subject, I literally laid down on the floor and took my shot.

9. Shutter Speed 1/400

As explained before the shutter speed controls how much movement you are going to capture as well as light. With this shot, I set the shutter speed to 1/400 and ran a tap which is a good source to take a photo of for shutter speed as it is constantly moving. As you can see with this photograph, since the shutter speed was turned up, it has captured the water movement more at a freeze than the next photograph. When doing my photo essay, if my subject is running or maybe it is raining then it may be a good idea to have this function set like this so I can capture the exact moment.

10. Shutter Speed 1/30

And with this photograph, you can see when the shutter speed is set at 1/30, then it captures the movement of the water. You can also see that this photograph is brighter than the previous one because more light was allowed to travel through the lens. I could use this technique if I wanted to capture the movement of my subject so the audience is aware of what the subject is doing at that particular time.

11. Aperture F.32

The aperture controls the length of the focus and how long the camera will focus for. This is measured in "F's" which stands for feet. The higher the number, the longer the focus will go on for and the lower the number then the shorter the focus. When set to manual focus (which is located on the lens) then you can play around with the focus and set it to where you want. This photograph was taken with aperture set to F.32 so the focus went through the whole photograph. The bottle (the subject) and the background are all in focus. This would be useful if I wanted to take some photographs of a landscape.

12. Aperture F.4 Subject Focus

The other way is to set it to F.4 like the next to photographs so you can achieve a shallow depth of field. With this photograph, I got the framing right and moved the focus so that the main subject (the bottle) was in focus while the background was not. This is something that the DSLR cameras are really good at and creating a shallow depth of field with a photo essay. 

13. Aperture F.4 Subject Out of Focus

This is exactly the same photograph with the same subject and framing but with the focus switched around. This time the background is in focus and the subject is out of focus. You have to slightly turn the focus ring and it is very precise so you have to be careful when trying to capture the right focus. This technique could be used for when the subject is looking at something and what s/he is looking at is more important than the subject.