Aperture Learnings
Last night, I had the opportunity to attend a live music event and had the artist’s permission to take photos. It was a really fun experience where the artist invited other singers/musicians to perform with her. She knew a lot of common songs and easily took requests from the audience, singing in a variety of languages.
I played a bit with changing the ISO at the event. In my understanding, ISO settings will make the subject more in focus and the background blurry. I didn’t notice that changing this value had a large effect on the outcome of my photos, though, because the indoor environment didn’t have a particularly distracting background.
I struggled a bit to get as sharp of photos as I would have liked. I noticed that I either had the lighting imbalanced or the shots were a bit blurry. I was able to edit some that I was happy with. HOWEVER, this inspired me to get into the practical application of the last post: specifically learning about how to quickly & easily change the aperture on my camera to better account for particularly light or dark environments.
Knowing what I do now, here’s some advice I would have given to the version of myself walking into the event:
Don’t worry about perfecting manual today, you can shoot some pictures in manual and others in automatic to help with lighting imbalances and blurriness.
Use flash, if appropriate. At this event, I shied away from it because I didn’t want to disturb the artist as she performed or the audience in this intimate setting. HOWEVER, I was lucky enough to have time after the set to snap some shots directly with the artist. Side bar, this was one of my favorite parts because she was often looking right at me!
Ask the artist if there are particular shots they’re interested in. (of course this depends on the situation). I finished taking photos, but could allow the artist to share their vision with me as well!
Mariana Bonetti, singer
After the session, I checked out the images, edited a handful and shared them with the artist. Next, I searched up how to change aperture on my camera and practiced playing around with the settings at home. Hopefully, this will help me with the next shoot!
Here’s to learning & growing :)
