Digital Photography - Tips

Project #4: How to Say it

Manual: Competent Communicator (CC)

Mar 30, 2007

[I did not script the complete speech]

Good evening fellow toastmasters and guests. Though my speech is titled as Digital photography, the tips and concepts are common and apply to film photography as well.

Imagine a situation where you or your spouse wanted to take photos of your kid. You spend lot of time to dress your kid up. To make your little prince/princess give a good pose or cute smile, you have to do lot of gymnastics or funny actions. Believe me, it is not an easy process. After all the drama, you and your spouse wanted to see the photos. What if your photo turns out to be like this? Oops! Shaken photo. Or like this? Oh, ho. Bad lighting (typically indoors). How do you feel in this situation? Bad? Guilty? or embarrassed? Can you avoid this? Yes, you can and that is the objective of this speech.

Okay, here is my agenda.

[Speech]

Lets move on. Here is an easy way to remember the aperture and shutter speed combination. Imagine 2 different water hoses connected to a tap: Bigger hose for large aperture and a smaller one for small aperture. Now, you want to fill a bucket with water using these hoses. Assume that bucket is nothing but the film or image sensor and water is nothing but light. If want to fill the bucket with small hose then you need to open the tap for longer time i.e., longer shutter speed. If you need to fill the bucket in less time i.e., shorter shutter speed, then you need bigger hose, which means larger aperture.

Lastly, camera manuals typically contain some of these information and operating instructions. Read, or at least browse them, Practice and be Creative.

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Copy of this presentation can be found here.