by Anne Mangiante, Office Manager

As summer approaches, we are not only celebrating the recent accomplishments of the Class of 2009, but we also begin senior portraits for the rising senior class. Each year, our company photographs over 300 seniors between June and August. For many of these students, senior portraits are the first professional portraits they have had since childhood. Many seniors view their portraits as a way to show of their tans, cars, pets, musical instruments, and even awards from high school. At Mangiante Photography, we strive to capture each senior’s personalities within their photos whether they are in our studio or on location.

Last summer we had the privileged to go to some new and exciting outdoor locations such as the Memphis Botanic Gardens, Collierville Square and the Hunt Phelan Home for portrait sessions with out clients. We try to travel to as many different outdoor locations as possible with our seniors to ensure that their outdoor sessions are truly unique photos. Each senior receives a proof book within one week of their photo shoot that they can take home to family and friends to help them in choosing photos they would like to purchase. Once they are ready to order, they can come back into our office and relax in our state of the art proofing room and view their photos on our 47″ flat screen TV! Please feel free to refer us to anyone you know who may be looking for affordable and unique senior portraits!

by Michael Spikes,

Operations Manager

Occasionally when I am on a shoot, I will encounter someone who will ask me, “Do people still use film?” I am not sure of any real exact figures of film vs. digital, but I can say that based solely on observation of other photographers that most of them are using digital. That said, there are many concepts that people could learn from film. One of them is ISO.

The term ISO comes from the International Organization for Standardization. They establish the standards for a variety of activities worldwide. Some time ago a standard was set regarding the light sensitivity of photographic film. They were given ratings such as 100, 200, 400, 800, and so on. These are often referred to as film speed. With digital sensors you have the same concepts and ratings, only now instead of film you have a digital sensor. Also, now you can change the ISO on the fly, while with film you were stuck with that ISO until you shot the whole roll or rewound it early.

Each rating in ISO decreases the amount of light needed to make an image. ISO 100 is perfect for bright sunny outdoor shooting but indoors you might want to go with ISO 400. If you don’t want to use a flash indoors you might need to use ISO 800 or higher. It all depends on the scene. If you are wondering “Can I use ISO 400 in bright sun?” Yes, you can. You will have a fast shutter speed or smaller aperture but you can use it.

There is a drawback to an increase in ISO. The higher the ISO the grainier your image will appear. This is not real noticeable in lower ISO speeds such as 100 and 200. However, when you go to 800, 1000, 1600 or higher then it becomes very obvious. This is not necessarily a bad thing it is something you should be aware of. Many camera makers now have a function called High ISO noise reduction that may help reduce the noise in the image, but also may affect the image’s overall details. There are also several image noise reduction programs available as well.

Which ISO should you use? When I used to sell film, I urged people to buy ISO 400 speed. It was great for all around shooting in many different light conditions and was not too grainy. After shooting digital for many years, I still feel the same way.

Michael Spikes, Operations Manager

Exposure in photography is something that once mastered, allows you to easily correct mistakes and understand what went wrong. It is the very essence of the whole process. Bad exposures make bad photos. Photography is the medium of light and controlling it can make the difference between snapshots and photos. We will begin with the basics.

Exposure can be thought of like this:

Exposure = How much light you let in (Aperture) and for how long (Shutter Speed) Now these setting are all based on how much available light or artificial light you have in your scene and the ISO (or film speed) you have set. Let’s look at each in further detail.

Aperture - The term seems daunting, but think of it as nothing more than a hole that light has to pass through to get to the sensor (or film) to make an image. The size of this hole determines your depth-of-field. In other words, will just your subject be in focus and the background blurred, or will everything in the image be in focus. Which one depends on many factors, but you get the idea. The larger the Aperture the less depth-of-field you have (less things in focus), the smaller the Aperture the more depth-of-field (more in focus). Apertures have numerical values and are referred to by f-stops. Common ones are f4, f5.6, f8, etc. The area where many people get tripped up is that the smaller the number the larger the hole. So an aperture of f4 is larger than f8. The f4 aperture allows more light in but decreases your depth-of-field.

Shutter Speed - This is the “how long” portion I mentioned above. It is like a curtain that opens and closes really fast or really slow. Shutter speed is referred to in whole and fractions of a second. Examples are 1/15, 1/13, 1/60, 1/125. A shutter speed of 1/15th of a second is slower than 1/125th. The shutter speed is responsible for blurring or freezing movement in the image. Those photos you see of waterfalls that look like curtains are because of a slow shutter speed, the frozen action of that winning touchdown is due to a faster shutter speed.

These two settings are related to each other because if you change one you must change the other. For example, if you want to shoot a portrait with a large aperture (f4 we’ll say) then depending on the light available, you will have a faster shutter speed. Because you are letting in more light, you have to decrease the amount of time that light can reach the sensor. If you want to shoot that same portrait at f16 then you will have to increase the amount of time needed to properly expose the scene. In other words, you will have a slower shutter speed.

You might be asking, “How do I know what settings I should use?” Well, as I mentioned earlier that depends on your lighting and what ISO you will be using… both of which will be the subject of “Part 2″.