What are the Three Basic Types of Photography?

Learn about 3 popular types of photography: portrait, landscape & macro. Understand how aperture control, shutter speed & ISO rating work together.

What are the Three Basic Types of Photography?

Photography is a creative art form that has been around for centuries. It is a way to capture moments in time and express emotions, feelings, and character. There are many different types of photography, but the three most popular are portrait, landscape, and macro photography. Portrait photography is a very popular style of photography that focuses mainly on capturing people and the emotions, character, feelings, and being of the subjects in general.

It involves much more than just taking a picture of someone. To capture the perfect portrait, photographers must understand how to use their camera's aperture control to adjust the amount of light that reaches the sensor. This will affect the depth of field in the image, which is how much of the background and foreground will be in focus. A shallow depth of field will blur out the background and foreground quickly as it moves away from the subject, while a deep depth of field will keep most of the image in focus from near to far.

Long exposure photography is another type of photography that requires a lot of patience and skill. It involves taking pictures with a slow shutter speed to capture movement or light trails. This type of photography can be used to create stunning images with blurred motion or light trails. It can also be used to capture star trails or night skies.

Macro photography is a type of close-up photography that focuses on capturing small details that are often overlooked. This type of photography requires specialized equipment such as macro lenses or extension tubes to get close enough to the subject to capture all the details. Macro photography can be used to capture small insects, flowers, or other small objects in great detail. The ISO rating of a camera is also important when it comes to photography.

The higher the ISO rating, the more sensitive it is to light and the more grainy and contrasty the image will be. A lower ISO rating will produce less grainy images with more accurate colors but will require more light to expose correctly. Photography is a game of compensations between aperture control, shutter speed, and ISO rating. To get the perfect exposure for an image, photographers must understand how these three factors work together and how they can be adjusted to achieve different effects.

By understanding these three basic types of photography, photographers can create stunning images that capture moments in time.