33 of 52 in my 2011 book blogging challenge.
Bryan Peterson’s Understanding Exposure is truly one of the best guides for getting started in “real photography.” If you want to be a digital photographer, and you don’t have any other photography books, get this one. Once you’ve mastered what Peterson has to teach here, you will feel like a pro even if you are just getting started.
Peterson has several other books in his Understanding series. I plan to also read Understanding Shutter Speed, Understanding Close-Up Photography, and Understanding Flash Photography. I started with the book on exposure, though, for two reasons. One, I ordered it a few months ago because it was highly recommended by Scott Kelby in his very helpful set of digital photography books. Two, it is the textbook for the class on digital photography that I’ve been taking at USM the past couple of weeks (a between semesters mini-session).
The class forced the issue of reading the book that had been sitting on my shelf for months, but I’m so glad it did. Peterson does an excellent job of explaining how to control exposure on a digital SLR camera, and by the time he finishes, you really understand that exposure is photography. If you don’t understand exposure, you can never move off the automatic settings on the camera, and you can never understand how or why you are getting good or bad pictures. You might be a lucky snapshooter from time to time without mastering the art and science of exposure, but you won’t be a photographer.
Peterson covers the triangle of correct and even creative exposure — ISO, aperture, and shutter speed — in a manner that is engaging and easy to understand. He makes technical information enjoyable to read by couching it in stories of his own experiences. He also provides lots of fantastic photographs with explanations of how he made them fantastic.
He goes beyond the basics of living on the manual end of the camera by discussing how to meter in difficult lighting situations, how to control depth of field, and which accessories to use when.
I was already shooting some in manual before reading this book, but I’m now much more comfortable in manual. I’ve learned how to keep my eye on the light meter as I reframe and refocus and attempt to keep up with moving subjects. This was something I learned years ago in film photography, but I had forgotten it by the time I purchased by first digital camera with all of its high tech automated functions. I thought the camera was taking care of things for me that I used to have to adjust manually.
The thing is the camera can take care of the light metering for you on a nice new digital camera, but if you want to be sure you get exactly what you want from the exposure, you have to handle it yourself. That’s what I’ve learned from Bryan Peterson. Mastering the elements of manual exposure gives you a lot more creative control.
I’ve also learned that this isn’t as hard as it sounds. It’s just a matter of understanding the relationship between ISO, aperture, and shutter speed and then practicing until adjusting the three on the fly becomes second nature. I’m not quite at the “second nature” point yet, but I’m on my way, and I owe much of that to Bryan Peterson. If you want to get started in digital photography, he’s your man, and Understanding Exposure is your book.
