The Power of Photography

2030 Words5 Pages

Have you ever taken a picture or been looking through a photo album and felt a sudden rush of emotion? Do you wonder what caused that emotion? Many find themselves captivated by a photograph and overwhelmed by the emotions that the photograph arouses. Believe it or not the arousal of emotion from those photographs was not caused by the content of the picture but by certain elements within the photograph. When a photograph is viewed it is not only the subject that triggers the overwhelming emotional response, it is the length of time that the film was exposed to sunlight, the way lighting is used and played with, and the strong detail of colors or lack thereof. While many believe that the subject acts as the primary stimuli to emotions, the above elements take that role leaving the subject as still a stimuli but a secondary one.

There are multiple components that make up a photograph, and understanding each of them is essential to creating different effects and achieving that certain "je ne sais quoi" that artists aspire for. The exposure of a photograph can be defined as the amount of light that film is “exposed” to or that the film is receiving (Davies 18). The lighting of a photograph may vary depending on the scene, for example the fluorescent lighting in schools, the bright sunlight of midday in the summer, or the lulled grey light that comes with a cloudy, rainy day. Both lighting and exposure rely on certain settings of a camera; these settings are called shutter speeds and apertures. The shutter speed determines how long the lens of the camera will stay open while taking a photo. Shutter speeds range from “b” which is as long as you hold the shutter release, all the way to 1/1000 of a second (Davies 18). When deciding on h...

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