Part Two of book

Part two of the book focuses mostly on exposures, lighting, depth of field, designing your picture space as far as dominance and such.  The first part on exposure brings up important information on a feature built into most new digital cameras.  The histogram is used to determine points of accuracy of your exposure for a shot.  Exposure is controlled by aperture size and shutter speed, which can be set to adjust automatically or be adjusted manually.  It is important to know how to adjust exposure settings such as aperture priority, shutter speed, and knowing the different metering patterns used as well in order to adjust for different lighting situations and such. 

                Cameras stick to a neutral 18% grey basis; therefore, you must work against the cameras basic grey adjustments in order to correct it for a more quality picture.  The best tip that the book presents about lighting is one that every photographer should know, and that is, try and avoid if at all possible shooting in the bright midday sun.  This will only cause your shots to be overly bright, and your detail will be lost to the excessive contrast built up from the overly bright light.  The best times to go out and shoot are sunrise and sunset, because the light gives you either front light which is good if you want to portray saturated color, contrast between different colors and fine detail in all parts of the scene; sidelight which produces long, deep shadows that reveal wrinkles, dimples, ridges and other details of a surface in greatest relief; and backlight is great if you want to dramatize on subjects with indistinct, shaggy, peripheries and features.  Depth of field comes up and is basically being able to focus on one main part of a subject and defining one specific feature of it, while still revealing a quality portrait of the rest of the subject as well. 

                This is also used in landscapes where either there is one single or a couple of focuses going down the line of one large landscape portrait.  Motion effects are mentioned as well where you can either catch a subject such as a hummingbird in mid-motion noticing that there is movement in its wings, while the rest of the bird seems to be still, as well as taking a shot of a stream and having the flow motion blurred from a slowed shutter speed shot.  One of the most important sections in this part of the book fall into the dominance section and is a good idea for any photographer to have knowledge of.  These are:  Red is more attractive than yellow; Large draws more attention than small; difference draws more attention than conformity; jagged lines are more striking than curved ones; diagnol lines are more attractive than vertical ones; sharpness is more attractive than blur; and light is more important than dark.  Another basic knowledge of photography mentioned is also the rule of thirds, which sometimes does need to be broken but only in necessary terms.