You might not know that I teach photography classes in the Washington DC area for both aspiring amateur and professional photographers. Yesterday, I spent the afternoon teaching a photographer who flew in from St. Louis, Missouri, for a monster 6-hrs of one-on-one private photography class time – 4 hrs yesterday and 2 more hours of photography classes tomorrow.

Some of my students come to me never having heard the terms “aperture” or “shutter speed,” whereas others know what they are, but are still confused about “how it all works.” Regardless of which category you fall into, these are fundamental photography concepts, and without understanding these basics, you’ll never be able to consistently create images that meet what you might envision in your mind’s eye.

Many of my photography students tell me in our initial consultation before starting their photography classes with me that they’re frustrated that they’re not able to make the camera produce the photographs they intended. Others say they’ve seen beautiful photographs of a person where the background is blurry, drawing all the focus to the person, and they want to know how to do that. More yet say they have trouble getting sharp images – they might be standing right next to someone else with the same camera photographing the same scene, but their photos aren’t sharp, while the other person’s photos are.  It all comes down to those two things – aperture and shutter speed, and it’s these things that lead to some of my students’ biggest ah-ha moments during many of our photography classes.

Understanding aperture gives you control over what’s in focus in the image – is the background distracting?  Do you want just the subject to be in focus? Or do you want the entire scene to be in focus?