The importance of timing, shutter speed and ISO

Recently, I volunteered to be the photographer for a joint tour that my residence and another undertook, although “tour” is a major overstatement. It was more of a short picnic, and the primary reason for people going was because there would be free alcohol available on the train. That might sound untrue, but sure enough, we had an entire carriage to ourselves with security guards and everything, and things soon started to go out of hand.

That is, however, not the topic of this article. I want to write and talk about a major revelation that I had on this trip, while taking photos and me being the only sober person on board. As an amateur photographer that had been out of the hobby for nearly six months due to academic reasons, when I took my first few photos of the day I was shocked to see how terrible my photos had become. Overexposed and blurry photos was the subject of my day, and I was terribly sad to see how I had regressed.
During the day, I took as many photos in as many different circumstances as possible to try and recapture my old abilities in photographing (which were minor, to say the least), and almost every single one was overexposed. The reason? Shutter speed.

I was so misguided as to completely underestimate the ration in which shutter speed decreased or increased exposure, and because it was rather gloomy in the train, as soon as we came back into sunlight my shutter speed was far too slow to take acceptable pictures. The result? A myriad of pictures that would give you a migraine of you looked at them too long.

During the day I took these photos of my friend, and only after seeing these photos on my laptop did I realise what difference shutter speed, ISO and the timing of the photo makes in the story told by the images. Even though these two photos are quite bright and overexposed, you can still feel the humour in the situation the guy finds himself in.

On this journey I also discovered how much fun it is to take photos of people. Previously, I only took photos of plants and landscapes, but people photography grabbed my attention as if by force, and I must admit I am hooked. Taking photos of people that do not know that they are being photographed and then showing it to them; the reactions that I get to such photos is amazing: Sometimes people would squeal and ask me to remove the photo, but some of my best photos of people (which doesn’t say much, considering what I mentioned earlier) was taken on that day.

See this semi-action photo of another friend of mine. The image would be greatly enhanced if it wasn't so bright, although the brightness might have something to do with the fact that he is so pale.

Admittedly, I am not a great photographer, and average seems like too good a word to describe my abilities, but I really enjoy the story that is told by every photo I take, and I learned much on this day, especially about ISO, shutter speed and exposure. After the conclusion of the tour, I did a bit of research on my mistakes, and now I am certain that all photos I am going to take in the future will be of much better quality, and the stories behind them will grow so much more interesting.