Photography - The Variables

There are many variables in photography (as there are in health, and life in general).  Depending on what you can do to eliminate them will determine the outcome of your images.  By eliminating a variable, I mean turning it into something that you can keep constant, that will no longer change.  For example, with enough practice and education, and knowing how to use your camera's settings, you can always get proper, if not perfect exposure.  Then you have one less variable to think about, and one less variable that could give you poor results.

Below is a list of some variables in photography that you can control (I'm sure there are a lot more):

1.  Lighting
2.  Color balance
3.  Exposure
4.  Post processing
5.  Posing (many variables related to this, such as hand placement, standing, sitting, etc.)
6.  Hair and make-up
7.  Clothing
8.  Your personality, as well as your subject(s)
9.  Focal length of the lens
10.  Aperture and speed you use for a particular photograph
11.  If shooting outdoors, the weather
12.  Backgrounds
13.  Your subjects facial expressions
14.  Your health (which includes another whole set of variables)
15.  The camera you use
16.  Etc.  (The variables I can't think of, LOL)

Each item in the above list, if not eliminated as a variable, will lessen the quality of the final image.  The more you are able to control, the better your final image.

I've been doing photography for over 25 years, actually a lot longer if you count the small metal box camera I received as a gift when I was 7 years old.  And a lot of the above listed variables got me, or I should say, my images!  But as long as you learn from what went wrong, your results will constantly improve.  Below are some examples of variables that affected my photos negatively:

This photo was due to an incorrect camera setting.  This was a Canon digital, and I was using, Av with flash.  Well, with that combination, the camera ignored the flash in determining exposure, and exposed as though there was no flash, and exposed at 1/6 second, hand held!  Once I realized what was happening, and corrected for this, the exposures were 1/60 second, and no more problem.

The following photo was taken with Kodachrome 25 with a Nikon camera.  Unfortunately, the light meter had the wrong information about the ASA (now ISO) - I forgot to change it after shooting ASA 125 or 400 film, so the image was way underexposed.  The same can happen now if you shoot in manual with the exposure being off by as much, or even in the auto modes if your light reading is taken in the wrong area.  As mentioned in a previous post, if your exposure is off, but you shot in RAW, you might still get decent results.

This mistake was discovered long after we had both climbed the tree for these images.  Digital cameras eliminated this problem pretty much because you can check your results as you go, and make the necessary adjustments on the spot.