The Exposure Triangle, Facetime & Sleep

Last night I received a call from my cousin (in a different time zone) who recommended that I buy the Canon 80 D. We had not spoken at length since I have been using my camera. He wanted to know how I was coming along and I told him that I was learning through trial and error but that I had signed up for a photography class that starts this month.

My cousin started asking me all sorts of questions about my photographs, the exposure and ISO settings I was using, etc. I had to tell him that I was basically using it more or less as a “point and shoot” unless I came across some feature accidentally that I was able to repeat. He started telling me to take some pictures while he was talking to me and then asked me how they looked. Of course, I couldn't describe intelligently what I was looking at to his satisfaction, so he asked if I had Facetime. I replied in the affirmative and thus began my photography tutorial using Facetime and my camera while I sat in bed trying to stay awake.

The only thing that I had close to me was the remains of some lemon ginger tea in a mug on my night stand. I took several pictures of it along with some other stuff that I cropped out of the picture. :)

I ended up taking pictures as he directed me, and then changing settings on my camera that I didn't even know existed. At one point, I could tell that I was just following instructions, but I was not comprehending everything. He told me to Goggle and master "The Exposure Triangle" and I would have enough information to take wonderful pictures and not have to worry about using the manual setting on my camera.

He also strongly suggested that I buy Photoshop for editing my pictures instead of trying to use the software that came with the camera. He told me that it only costs $10 a month. Well, I am retired and used to buying software at educational discount prices, and I don't want another monthly bill. I told him that another photographer had suggested that I use a "free" editing software named Gimp. https://www.gimp.org/

Since I am still such a novice at using my camera, my photos are not worth investing in editing software to make them better. I didn't tell my cousin that though, because he was being so helpful. When I started visibly yawning as he went into greater detail on the knobs, buttons, and settings on the camera, he finally said, "You just need to come visit me and I will be able to give you some one-on-one instruction and have you using your camera with confidence in no time." We said our goodbyes until later.

When I woke up this morning, I kept trying to remember what it was he told me to Goggle. I did remember the word triangle, so I googled photography triangle and the exposure triangle came up as a suggestion. Thank goodness for Google! I read an excellent article by Alex Cooke with illustrations about how you use aperture, ISO and shutter speed to take quality pictures.

https://fstoppers.com/education/exposure-triangle-understanding-how-aperture-shutter-speed-and-iso-work-together-72878

The article was informative and helped me understand what my cousin was talking about last night while I was nodding off trying to stay awake. I was not bored at all, I was just sleepy. I know that I would benefit from visiting my cousin, but it would not be a day trip. I will have to plan on spending a couple of nights because I haven't visited him in a long while and I also have other relatives in the area that I would have to make time to see.

I know that once I start taking my photography class in a structured environment where I can ask questions and get assistance with "my" camera, that my learning curve won't be so steep. I looked at posts this morning where the photographers included their settings with their pictures and I realized that it made a little more sense to me. I'm learning. :)