What is exposure? Photography exposure is basically how bright or dark your image is. We call a photo that is too dark, underexposed. A photo that is too bright is overexposed.

A photo where your subject is not too dark, and not too bright, but it looks natural, is properly exposed. Your subject could be anything from a person to a mountain in the distance.

Depending on your photo’s composition, not everything can be properly exposed. Sometimes your background will be too bright. Sometimes one side of your photo will be too dark.

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The important thing we want you to remember with ‘proper exposure’ is that it’s partly up to you as the artist. You may want your photo to be dark or to be bright. That can create some interesting and creative shots.

This is the basic idea of photography exposure. As you go through the course, you’ll learn how to control your photo’s exposure using in-camera options like aperture, shutter speed and ISO, as well as out-of-camera things like natural and artificial lighting.

Bonus video:

Continue with lesson 3: What is aperture?

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