Name: ______________________________

Photography Terms
Research what each of these terms mean, and what controls they are on your
camera, if they are. The sheet provided in your Intro to Photography booklets will
help determine this.
Give a brief description, when best each is used, and what/where it is located on
your camera if possible in your answers.
1. Aperture
2. Motion
3. Depth of Field
4. Shutter Speed
5. Rule of Thirds
6. Exposure
7. Composition
8. Focal Length
9. SLR
10. Auto Focus
11. Back Lighting
12. Balance
13. Contrast
14. F-stop
15. ISO Speed










Name: ______________________________

1. Aperture is the small hole that lets light in. Depending on what you put
it on, you can change a pictures brightness and darkness by changing the
aperture (how much light you let in.)
2. Motion in photography includes panning, freeze shots and smearing.
Their all techniques of taking pictures of something moving
3. Depth of field is the distance between the nearest and farthest objects
in a scene that appear acceptably sharp in an image. Its what and where
the camera focuses on.
4. The shutter speed is how fast the camera captures the picture. The fast
the shutter closes over the lens the sharper the picture will be. If you
leave the shutter speed on very slowly, it can make an image more
smeared. For a night shot, in order to capture the light of the moon a
slower shutter speed using a tripod, it will capture the light perfectly. A
low shutter speed when capturing a fast moving car would not work
well.
5. Rule of thirds is a basic technique for photographers to frame to images.
For an example, taking a picture of a mountain scene, 1 third would be
grass, the middle would be the mountains and the top third would be
sky.
6. Exposure is the brightness or darkness in a photo
7. Composition is the placement or arrangement of visual elements or
ingredients in a work of art, as distinct from the subject of a work.
8. The focal length is the distance measure in mm from the optical lens to
the focal point. You can change at what distance youre taking the
picture and what its going to focus on.
9. SLR stands for single-lens-reflex camera. Its composed of a prism and
mirror system. The photographer can look through the eyepiece and see
what the picture will be.
10. Auto focus is a device that automatically focuses your camera on a
subject or scene.
Name: ______________________________
11. The back lighting is a lighting technique where a bright light is placed
behind a subject rather than in front and it and it makes a glowing effect
around the subject.
12. Balance is a technique in photography where the weight of the colors
and the position of the subject is perfectly balanced.
13. Contrast has to deal with light and darkness and the difference between
them in a photo.
14. Focal length is normally printed right on the camera lens. A lens with a
100mm focal length set to an f-stop of f/10 has an aperture diameter of
10mm. Doubling the f-stop number halves the size of the aperture
opening.
15. ISO Speed is the cameras sensibility to light. The lower the ISO the less
sensible it is to light.