Better Photos
From beginners to pros, I'm taking you from photography basics to creative challenges to find your unique passion for photography.
Better Photos
001 Unlocking the Power of Manual Photography
Brittany Porter from BPosh Photo shares her journey from an introverted photography enthusiast to a professional capturing the essence of motherhood. Through a detailed exploration of camera settings and the importance of including moms in family photos, she inspires listeners to document their lives beautifully.
• Discusses the impact of being a mother on photographic goals
• Shares experiences capturing kids' early moments and how it changed her approach
• Explains the crucial role of camera settings in producing quality images
• Provides practical tips for beginners on aperture, shutter speed, and ISO
• Encourages listeners to experiment with photography at home
• Offers insights into personal growth as a photographer and the journey of memory-making
*amazon links for cameras & gear
*find me on INSTAGRAM https://www.instagram.com/bposhphoto/
*book a session
Hey, mama, whether or not you're trying out your camera for the very first time or you've been doing this a while and just looking for some creative inspiration, I've got all that and more. I'm here to help you see your world differently, challenge you creatively and find your passion for photography. My name is Brittany Porter, with Be Posh Photo, and I have been doing photography for a long time now. I went professional, I think, like in 2010, right before I got married, and I was originally doing video editing for commercials, but before that, I have always loved photography. I took photography in high school, doing film photography in the dark room. Then I continued in college doing film photography in the darkroom. Then I continued in college doing film photography and then later switching to a digital photography editing class. That just helped me learn Photoshop and I knew I wanted to do something creative. But my dad was in the realm of advertising and graphic design and that just was not what I was good at. But I did love video editing and photo editing. There's something magical about that that I could spend hours and hours doing that and I feel like I never can learn enough. There's never a top to reach. There's always more to learn and experiment with, and that's what I love is that I don't get creatively bored. There's always something else inspiring me to do something else.
Speaker 1:So after that I actually hated talking to people. I am more of an introvert, and so when I thought of the idea of photography, I was like I think I'm just gonna do nature. Like I think I'm just gonna do nature, like I think I'm just gonna do things that don't speak to me or that I don't have to um step out of my comfort zone to really do much. Um. But then I mean, nature doesn't really pay, especially right away. So I started my photography with um first of all photographing friends and then putting ads on Craigslist to do uh model, uh portfolios. So I had a couple people um volunteer to let me photograph them more high fashion ish Um, but not really because I had no idea what I was doing. Um, not really because I had no idea what I was doing. And then I started doing people and their dogs. So I would go to Freedom Park and I would ask people if they would like a photo with their pet, and then I would give them a business card and then I would tell them I would send them their photos for whatever price. And that only happened maybe like twice, because it turned out to be kind of sketchy.
Speaker 1:So I had this new camera, was doing photography stuff and I started doing a couple weddings. Some people hired me to go photograph their wedding and I was a solo wedding shooter and that scares me now a little bit. I did not even have like multiple memory cards. I had like two cameras at the same time going back and forth.
Speaker 1:But then once I had my first child, everything changed and I was wanting pictures of her and I mean, as a first time mom, it's like you just went to war pretty much that's what it felt like and the last thing I wanted to do was really pick up a camera or have my photo taken. When my husband's grandma would come over and just tried to take pictures and I'm like I look terrible, I don't feel good and I was like I have a camera, I'm just to take my own newborn photos. Well, at that time everything is stuck in JPEG, which means whatever way I edited, those photos are stuck like that. So that's one thing, and the second thing is I'm not in any of these. I'm not in any of them with her. That I like the way that I look, or that are beautiful or timeless. And so when I have, her birthday come up every year and I'm like looking at things to post and I'm like these are all terrible. These are either like iPhone pictures that I mean, as the iPhones get better, they get better quality, but this is like old, it might even be. I don't even know if I had an iPhone. Honestly, back then it could have been a Blackberry. No, I think I don't know anyways.
Speaker 1:So the newborn photos were not great. She was like a month old by the time I got around to feeling up to taking them. I didn't know newborn etiquette with keeping babies safe, so I would put her in a basket trying to mimic a Pinterest photo that I saw, and the basket would tip over. I mean, luckily there was a pillow in there, but I didn't realize that you need to put like a weight or something in there so that it doesn't fall with a newborn baby in it. She was bigger than um, obviously like a newborn within the first week, and so getting some of the photos are just I don't know, like it's not sleeping baby cute it's. I mean she's cute obviously, but the photos looking at them now I like cringe and thinking about, like, oh well, photos for, like, her high school yearbook or for a slideshow at her wedding. I have nothing and I didn't want to make that mistake again.
Speaker 1:So the second time the second child I was like I'm hiring a photographer, I want to be in the photos, I want to have the right timing, the right experience, all the things. So I hired some photographers and, while I loved their work, they were primarily wedding photographers, and so it still was like a month after I had my daughter and, um, one thing I didn't love was my outfit in the photos. So here I am like, okay, I did a little bit better. Now I have a professional doing the photos so that I could be in them. I have photos when she's like sleeping, but honestly, by that point she was addicted to this ginormous pink passy and she either wanted that, or to nurse or to cry. So photos were still not up to my like ideal what I saw on Pinterest, probably. And so then, the third time around, I hired some of my favorite photographers that do newborns and families. It was a sister team. They no longer do photography together, but that was finally when I was like yes, I hired hair and makeup. Thank you, sabrina from Look Love. And she came and did my hair and makeup. All I had to be in charge of was putting on my outfit, picking out my kids' clothes and just making sure my baby was fed. That was it, and it felt amazing and I love those photos. I probably wouldn't have gone as dark in my color scheme, but that was my thing then and that has pushed me to really have a heart to get moms in the photos.
Speaker 1:When I look back at my childhood, photos there are I mean, cameras were very few, it was disposable cameras, pretty much film and the memories that I have are really like from the pictures that I've seen. The memories that I have are really like from the pictures that I've seen, and my dad was the one that was really about pictures or art in general. So I have all these memories with my dad, but I'm like I don't have that much with my mom. Like when I'm looking for pictures I'm like where, where is she? What was my childhood Like? What was this Like? I wish that I had more photos with my mom and it just.
Speaker 1:Photos create memories and they create like this, this ideal in your mind of like what life was like you know, back then. It creates like the feeling behind a memory, and so I love that aspect of photography and just combining all of those things with getting moms in the photo, having your baby's photos done right away so that they still have that newborn sleepiness, they still have that tiny, tiny body and hands and face and feet and all those things maybe they still have their belly button thing attached and giving moms outfits to just put on and guiding them throughout the whole process of what to wear, what to do and then how to show up beautifully, so that you can freeze time and beautiful moments with your baby. And then the next day you can put sweats back on, you can put on your burp cloth and spit up clothes right after, but for that moment, just to have a little bit of time to get ready, to feel like a human again, to take a shower and do your hair and put on a little makeup, like that just makes you feel like okay, got this. It empowers you, it helps you feel beautiful and you know that you have done something for your child. To look back on later and be like, wow, that was beautiful, my mom is so pretty I can't believe that she just gave birth and she looks like that. You know, like we're so hard on our bodies and so hard on our experiences right after labor and it is such a beautiful thing and I'm like, so appreciative to be able to capture that for moms. So that's kind of what I do and why I do it. And then I continue pretty much just reinforcing the fact that moms should be in photos. So whether that's six month session, whether that's Mother's Day, whether that's, you know, christmas card photos, like I want moms to be in the photos and I want them to feel beautiful. So that's pretty much what I do and why. Now I want to take all that I have learned and am currently learning and still working on and pass that along to you so that you can take your photography to the next level, or maybe that you can take that camera that you just got for Christmas or that has been sitting around collecting dust, and open it up and figure out what are these, what are these modes, what do I do? How do I take manual photos? How do I get some things blurry, something sharp? How do what do I look for? How do I get kids to sit still, how do I place people in the photo? All those things is things that we're going to cover throughout this podcast For 2025, I am excited to bring this podcast to you first and then, hopefully, I am developing a mini course that will be like if you are listening to this podcast and you're like, wait a second, I want to see what you're doing Like this doesn't make sense audibly, I need to see things visually.
Speaker 1:Then that will hopefully be available to you this year. Just to take it a little further, I also obviously want more newborns. I love newborns. Most photographers either love them or hate them. I just have found such a rhythm with them and I find I hate looking up locations. Sometimes I hate looking at the weather and it's like, okay, newborn. All I have to do is the mom tells me she's had the baby. We find a time that week and boom, I'm there, it's at their house and everything goes great. At the end of the year of 2024, I used ChatGPT a lot for my marketing and I hope to continue that more in 2025, because I was really starting to find more of my ideal clients and we'll kind of talk about that later with business kind of stuff, but I never want people to feel like they have to fit into a mold of what I photograph.
Speaker 1:I want people to look at my photography and say, yes, that's me, or I love those colors, or I already have so many neutrals, or I just love the way that you capture families. I want people to just feel like, yes, that's me and let's book her because we align and we have similar styles. Like when I find those clients, I'm like, yes, like I want to edit this forever, I want to photograph this forever, and that I feel like is ideal. I don't want to make people feel like they're put into my bubble and they feel uncomfortable. I want people to look at my stuff and be like, yes, let's do this, so more of that for 2025.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, so a lot of what I do is photograph and then edit, but then there's also like the behind the scenes of all the business things and the marketing strategies and content creation and, uh, the boring stuff like tax stuff and uh, accounting and all that that I still do myself, but, um, I wish that I didn't, um, anyways, so when I'm editing, I just finished watching the selling the city on Netflix. I don't know if you watched that. Yet I love, um, anything that Adam Develo, whatever that he produces. I mean, he was the one that did like Laguna Beach and, um, the Hills and pretty much Selling Sunset, like all the things on Netflix or that is a you know cast like that. I am like that's my jam, that and anything. Reality Reality, housewives I'm all about that. Summer House, southern Charm um, southern Charm. So that's pretty much like what I watch when I'm editing. Um, if I don't have to pay like that much attention to something, if it's got to be like an in-depth thing that I have to watch, then, um, like, I started watching like Bridgerton and it was like by like the third or fourth episode I was like wait, what, what happened? Like I think this is good and then I missed like the first half of it because I wasn't really even paying attention. So, not sure what you guys like to watch, or if there's anything else that you recommend, send it to me in my Instagram at be posh photo, let me know.
Speaker 1:Um, life updates. We just got off Christmas and today my kids are back at school, so I am getting things done. Sorry for the delay on this podcast, but I'm hopefully getting it out today. I've been working on the artwork, been working on the what to say and all of the audio, editing and then figuring out where to host it and all the things. So that is all that I have for you before we get started, and now we are going to get talking about our topic today, which is your camera settings. So thanks for being here. Today we are going to talk about your settings and what kind of things that you're going to adjust to take it off auto mode.
Speaker 1:So if you have a DSLR or if you have a mirrorless camera and if you're trying to decide which one is best, just go for the mirrorless. I just upgraded to the mirrorless this year, a couple months ago, and I went with the Sony a7 IV and I love it because with a DSLR, when you are trying to see if your image is sharp or if the exposure is right meaning it's darker or lighter or right on points with what you're going for or if it's blurry all the things that you're looking for if it has too much noise, you can't tell in a DSLR until you go back and preview your photo, so you are taking time off of shooting by going and seeing if your photo is even looking good. What I love about the mirrorless is that you can see automatically on the screen, by your adjustments, if the photo is looking good or not. So you don't even have to go back and preview the photo. You can see it right in the screen as you're adjusting, before you even take the picture. So that's what I love.
Speaker 1:If you're going back and forth on what camera to get, I will put some beginner options in the show notes, but basically you're looking for something that has manual mode, and you'll even get something from this podcast. If you're shooting with your iPhone, there are definitely certain apps, like Lightroom, that you can shoot a camera through that app and be able to adjust manual modes. So we will talk about that as well. How do you find manual mode? You want to find the M and switch your dial to that setting, take it off auto and find the M. So there are three things that you need to know about manual mode your shutter speed, your ISO and your aperture. Your shutter speed, your ISO and your aperture. This will make up your exposure triangle.
Speaker 1:So on a mirrorless, you will be able to see that image in your viewfinder, but on a DSLR or on my Canon, you have a compensation timeline looking thing or bracket with a zero in the middle and you want all of your settings to make your little dial fall around that zero number. So that means it is perfectly exposed. If it goes above that zero, then it means that you have a little brighter of an image. If it's way above that zero, you have a too bright of an image. If it's below that zero or that middle line, then you have too dark of an image, and if it's way below, you want to avoid that and adjust your settings properly. Each of those settings will make that slider go one way or the other, and so your goal is to manipulate your priority first and then adjust the other things to make that balanced, to make that fall at zero or to make your photo look exposed properly in your viewfinder or on the screen on a mirrorless camera.
Speaker 1:Your aperture is the thing that you're probably going to want to focus on most, that is, how blurry the background is versus how sharp the subject is. So I know that you guys love those photos with the sharp faces and the blurry backgrounds. That is all with the aperture, and if you want more of the background blurry. You're going to go lower in that number. So this is the number on your screen that you will see that has a f in front of it. So whether it's an f 2.0, an f 1.8 and, depending on your lens, you can go lower like an F1.2, and those lenses are going to cost more.
Speaker 1:Lenses are another thing that you want to think about when you buy a camera. It may come with a kit lens, and this is great for beginners. It's great to start out, it's great to practice. Once you learn the process of how to manipulate these things, then you can progress and buy a nicer camera body or nicer lenses. With lenses they are going to be expensive, but part of that expense means that they're going to be heavier. They're going to be made of better quality materials. They are going to be more sharp images. They are going to work better in low light. So you may have a lens that can only go down to an aperture of 4.0 and while you will still be able to get great pictures and may not work best in low light situations. So that's when you want to upgrade your lenses or make sure that you're shooting in lighting that works according with your lens, so with your aperture.
Speaker 1:This is where you can get that nice bokeh, that blurry background, the lights, that kind of blur behind the subject. And the more that you will get of that is when your subject is closer to your camera and the background is further away. So sometimes you may want to use this if you don't have the most ideal background. You want your subject closer to the camera lens and the background further from the subject so you can play around with this. Typically, you will get more blur if the subject is closer to your lens and further from the background. So I shoot with a 35 sigma lens that goes down to a 1.4, I believe.
Speaker 1:I don't like to shoot really less than a 1.8. When you're going 1.2, it's like an eyelash. So if you miss the focus, even just a little bit, you are going to have like the eyelash in focus rather than the eyeball. I don't really shoot with anything less than 1.8, maybe 1.4. But for group shots or for, I like to think, if you have two subjects, you want to probably be at that 2.0. If you're going up more people, then I would suggest going higher. You're going to lose a little bit of that bokeh, that blur in the background. If you're shooting landscape and you want a lot of the background to be in focus, then you're going to want to up that aperture to a high number, to 12, 14. But you're going to have to adjust your shutter speed and your ISO to make sure that your image still has those blacks, still has those whites and everything in between and doesn't become a dark image or too bright of an image. But I would just start shooting things at the difference between a 2.0 and maybe a 5.0 and just see the difference that it makes in your photos. So that's aperture. That is going to be how much blur you want in your background versus how much of your subject you want sharp. Okay, going on.
Speaker 1:Next is your shutter speed. So your shutter speed means how quick is your shutter closing. So if you are trying to take a picture of somebody in action, then you want that shutter speed high. This is where you see the 1 over 200 or 1 over 4000. That's what you're going to see with your shutter speed in your viewfinder or if you have a little thing on top of your camera that tells you your settings, if you are shooting something fast like a running kid, you want that shutter speed to be as high as you can get it without the frame turning black. So we're going to be manipulating these three things the shutter speed, aperture and ISO to make sure that your screen, your picture, is not completely black and it's not completely blown out white with highlights. So when you're adjusting the shutter speed then you want to think about how quickly are my subjects moving and then adjust that.
Speaker 1:If you want a blur, like sometimes I want the family to be like the parents to be in focus, and I want the kids to be running around them and I want them to be a little blurry, like even to just show a little chaos or a little fun or a little bit of movement and just life. So I will put it down to 1 over 30, maybe 1 over 20, depending. Those are kind of my settings for if I want blur, if I don't want blur. The rule of thumb is normally your shutter speed should not go below your focal length. So if you have a lens that is a 35, I do not want to drop down my shutter speed below a 1 over 35. If you have a 50 millimeter lens, then you don't want to drop your shutter speed down to below 1 over 50. This will make your photo probably blurry unless you have a tripod probably blurry unless you have a tripod. You want it to be extremely still or have no handshake, no movement of the camera at all when you're using lower shutter speeds. So when I try to do my intentional blur of the kids and sharpness of the parents, I want them to be super still and I have to keep my body and hand and everything my camera completely still. So that is a little tricky getting some of that to be in focus. That is your shutter speed.
Speaker 1:The third thing and it's not the thing I prioritize first most of the time is your ISO, and this is how much light is coming into your camera. So if you have a dark room, you are going to bump that ISO up to however high, but you have to keep in mind that the higher the ISO, the more noise you're going to get. So I would not recommend trying to take a photo in a completely dark room without any light, and we will go on to talk specifically about light in week three, so that will be probably the most important episode to listen to. If you're doing ISO for a bright, sunny day, you should be at like 100. For a evening session, you should be at like 400 to 600. The higher you go, you can, of course, do that, and the newer cameras are getting way better at seeing low light and that's why I invest in more expensive cameras is because they are better in lower light situations.
Speaker 1:So when I'm in an in-home situation whether I'm doing newborn sessions or just in home, and the light is not bright and I'm wanting to use natural light, then I can bump that ISO up higher, whereas a cheaper camera would make that very noisy and very like there's nothing you can do about it. It's not just grain, it's like like little balls of color that will look on your image later. Or if you look at it at in a bigger image, like if you're trying to print it out and put it on your wall and you took a picture in a dark room, you are going to see a bunch of little colored dots and they could be dark dots. They could be all on the face if you're trying to brighten the people up but leave the room darker. So ISO is definitely important and you don't want to max out your ISO, but that's kind of something that I will set first and probably not mess with it. My whole entire shoot. I will more likely be switching back and forth between my shutter speed and my aperture To get your photo balanced.
Speaker 1:The main goal that you want is you want your highlights to be represented, you want your shadows to be represented and you want a whole spectrum in between. You don't want to look at your photo and think, oh my goodness, that is too, too dark, I can't see a thing, because you're going to only be able to lighten it in editing so much. And you definitely, definitely, definitely do not want your photo to be too bright, because, even if you try to edit it in a post-processing app, you are not going to regain any information. So, as photographers, we all want to shoot a little darker rather than brighter, especially if you're shooting in raw, and that's another thing is that you should be shooting in raw. So you have two options you can shoot in raw or you can shoot in jpeg raw, r-a-w and what this means is that you, your photo, will basically keep all of the information that it sees, whereas a jpeg will compress information and when you go to edit it later, you will not be able to recover the original look of the photo or what was actually there.
Speaker 1:So the first couple sessions I shot as a beginner photographer, I shot everything in JPEG and so I would go on to my editing and I think at that time I did Photoshop and I would edit it and it like flattens the image so that, like, you cannot go back and find the original photo. So it is stuck in time with whatever filter editing that I liked as a new photographer and as I've grown, that has come to change over the years. So now my newborn photos and probably the whole first year of my daughter is stuck in a edit that I don't like and I cannot go back and recover the file. But if I had shot in raw, I would be able to go back to that raw image and edit it again and again and again and tweak things and keep those forever and be able to bring them into whatever time period I want. It's kind of like Instagram when you had like the filters, like back in the day, of where if you applied that filter like you can scroll back to the bottom of your Instagram and see it's still stuck with lo-fi, whatever filters there were back then.
Speaker 1:So just to recap, we have learned about three different components of the exposure triangle, which is, in other words, for saying, a balanced light image. You have your aperture, which is going to decide how blurry the background is versus how sharp your subject is. You have your shutter speed. That is going to decide how quickly you are stopping the motion. Are you having it blurry with the lower shutter speed or are you having it quicker, stopping the action quicker with a higher shutter speed? Then you have your ISO, which is determining how light the room that you're shooting in or the outside that you are shooting in. So for homework, I'm always going to give you a challenge, a way to practice this, so you can take notes, you can write down the challenge.
Speaker 1:Basically, you are going to practice your aperture, your shutter speed and your ISO in manual mode and different lighting setups at home. So you're going to take turns manipulating one part of the exposure triangle to experiment with how each setting works. Each photo should still be within that zero, or exposed properly, or slightly under or fall within the middle of your compensation bracket. So you can go outside and take a picture with an ISO about 100 during the day on a sunny day, then go inside to a dark room and up your ISO as high as it will go and compare the two photos. Then take a photo of your child or pet or somebody going quickly at a low shutter speed, so that one over 30, one over 20 and see what that looks like. And then take another one it can be the same exact thing at a higher shutter speed, like 1 over 6000 or 1 over 8000, and compare what it looks like. Then, for your aperture, you are going to take a photo at the lowest setting that your lens goes. So if it's a 2.0, shoot at something with a 2.0 and try to put your subject closer to your lens and a background further away, and then you can take the same exact photo and just change your aperture to a 12.0 or an F7 or an F5. You can kind of play with it. Just go a little bit higher or as high as you can go with the aperture to see how that looks different. So once you have those six photos, then feel free to post them on instagram and tag me and show me at be posh photo what you have gotten and what you've noticed Some troubleshooting for when you are photographing.
Speaker 1:If you are noticing that your photos end up too blurry, you have a shutter problem. You are shooting at too low of a shutter speed for your subject. If your photo is too bright, you could have an ISO problem, or you could also have a shutter speed or aperture, but you're not looking at your exposure compensation bracket. If your photo is too dark, then you could have a problem with any one of those settings or your ISO could be too low. And another thing if your photo too noisy, if you're finding too much noise in your photos, that's because your ISO is too high, so try bringing that down. Those are just some troubleshooting tips.
Speaker 1:If you have any questions about the topic today, then feel free to reach out to me at BePoshPhoto on Instagram and I can help you, or save your questions for the next podcast and answer those before we get started on the next topic. And if you are in the market for newborn photos, obviously send me a message. And the next thing that I have coming up for multiple sessions is the greenhouse. You guys loved the greenhouse and so we have something coming up in March for that. So head over to my Instagram and click on the link in bio and you can find all the booking details there. Enjoy the show notes with links to my favorite beginner cameras, lenses that I would suggest being your first purchase, and any other things I think would be helpful. You can find those in going to show episode and seeing the show notes there, or you can find it at itsbeposhphotocom slash podcast. All right, have a great day. Bye.