Basic Photography | Creative Photography by Using Slow Shutter Speed

© 2009 Wazari Wazir | Pulau Ketam | ISO 100 | Aperture f/10 | 1/20

Sometimes we need to think outside of the box to get a creative photograph, I was shooting this young lady with a group of a photographers at Pulau Ketam or Crab Island in Selangor, I just wanted to get a different shot, I don’t want standard static boring shot, I want to add some drama to my picture, so I decided to ask her to spin the umbrella, since the umbrella is colorful, I think it will look great if it was spinning.

The problem is that, we are in a very bright area, very hard to get a slow shutter speed, so I try to find a better place, no so bright place where I can use slow shutter speed, a shade area would be nice. It was not very easy or straight forward, I need to ask the model, to stand still, never swing her head, keep her head static and just spin the umbrella without making too much body movement.

It take few shots just to get it right but I was quite happy with the result and other photographers follow suit, since most of them are still new in Photography, I’ve to tell them to use slow shutter speed, because without slow shutter speed, they will never get this shot or effect. I take this shot with shutter speed of 1/20, I need to stop down the aperture to f/10 and also to set the ISO to it’s lowest setting which is ISO 100 so I can get a slow shutter speed.

Actually it was easy to get all this kind of creative photography if we have a very solid basic of controlling the EXPOSURE, by manipulating ISO, Aperture and Shutter speed we can get very interesting result. It is very hard to be creative if we doesn’t know how to control our tool which is our camera. The point of this article is that to get back to basic, learn as much as you can about how our camera works and the window of creatives photography will be open wide for you to explore.