The Great thing about shooting Digital today is if you shoot with a DSLR, Point and Shoot, or Camera Phone, your camera can make all the critical exposure compensations and calculations for you. But even the best auto systems in the world has some problems, it has now way of knowing what image you have in mind when taking a photo.

For example if your moving a fast moving subject your camera can't decide if the subject should be frozen or blurred.



Similarly when your shooting a portrait, your camera can't decide whether the background should be blurred or rendered sharp.



Maybe you're tired of seeing a scene like this and coming home with a photo like this..



To get the image that you want you have to override your cameras decision making process, and the key to knowing how to take control of your camera is an understanding of exposure.

Even with all the technology advances in taking pictures you still need to understand the basics of exposure theory that photographers of a hundred years ago had to learn. Because your camera has substantially more computing power than the Apollo astronauts took to the moon. It still doesn't necessarily have taste. Learning exposure theory doesn't mean you're going to throw out the automatic features of your camera. Having an understanding of exposure theory is going to help you understand when you need to override your cameras auto features. Light and shadow are the building blocks of good images, and as you learn how to control light and tone, you'll begin to recognize shots that you may not be noticing now.

This series of Disney Park Photography 101 is for anyone with a digital camera, however you will get more out of it if you have more manual controls in your digital camera.

This series you will learn more details about :

• Aperture
• Shutter Speed
• ISO
• Intentional Overexposure
• and Camera Bracketing

In Part 2 we will talk about what exactly we mean by exposure?