Along with shutter speed and aperture, ISO is one of the three fundamental exposure parameters that have a significant impact on the technical quality of your image and on the creative decisions you can make. If you are new to photography and feeling a bit unsure about how to handle your ISO, check out this helpful video tutorial that takes a very pragmatic approach to the topic with five useful tips.

Coming to you from Nate Torres Photography, this awesome video tutorial features five tips for getting a better handle on using ISO. By far, the most common mistakes beginners make with ISO is simply keeping it too low in an attempt increase image quality and using too slow of a shutter speed as a result, which causes issues with blurring from camera shake or subject motion. The important thing to remember is that modern cameras handle higher ISOs very well, and post-processing software can do quite a bit to clean up noise. On the other hand, if a photo is blurry from camera shake or subject motion, there is not much that can be done to fix it. It is always better to have a noisy but sharp photo than one with less noise but issues with blurring. Check out the video above for the full rundown from Torres. 

Before most people knew what a camera was, the V&A was already amassing photographs. Its collection — now 800,000 works — began as soon as it was founded, as the pioneering Museum of Manufactures in 1852. Just a year earlier, the magazine The Chemist reported the invention of the collodion process, which became the standard photographic method in the next decades. So the museum and the medium grew up together, and still share a unique, hybrid identity — connecting art and design, fashion and performance.

You succumb at once to that invigorating, upbeat mix in its Photography Centre, an ambitious venture begun in 2018 and fully inaugurated — four brand new galleries joining the initial three — last week. The opening exhibition Energy: Sparks from the Collection is a seductive, dynamic and original history of photography seen through the prism of its most difficult subject — things that move. Alfred Stieglitz’s train hurtles towards us in “The Hand of Man” (1902). Jacques Henri Lartigue celebrates his brother’s flight in a homemade glider “Zissou Taking Off in the Yard at Rouzat” (1910). A Hoover pipe snakes up a fishnet-stockinged leg in Jo Spence’s “Libido Uprising” (1989) and clouds of pulverised stone shoot out like rockets from a quarry in Nayoa Hatakeyama’s “Blast #5707” (1998).

That the 20th century — from American industrial might and belle époque optimism at the start to feminist and environmental pressures at the end — was the first to see itself through photographs is quite brilliantly distilled. Bill Brandt’s sooty “Miners Returning to Daylight” in Wales in 1937 is a miracle of chiaroscuro empathy. Casting dazzling light and sinister shadowy forms, Brian Griffin’s firework explodes over booming high-rise London in “Big Bang” (1986) to suggest the city as an unstoppable economic force, yet also a war zone.

Chronology is jumbled: moments assemble and reassemble like a kaleidoscope into fleeting patterns, shifting between old and new, known and unknown, the past altered by the present.

From a central space, Jack Elwes’s deepfake cabaret drag installation “The Zizi Show” (2020-23) blares out Beyoncé and George Michael and sends neon-pink and orange flickers down two long, classically hung, mostly monochrome picture galleries. The result is a dazzling juxtaposition with such gracious 19th-century landmarks as Philip Delamotte’s surging jets “Water Fountains at Crystal Palace” (1852) and Gustav Le Gray’s “Tugboat” (1856), silhouettes of a sailing ship trailing a steam-powered vessel on the Norman coast.

It’s a lovely meeting of innovative glories across the centuries. Delamotte’s images of Crystal Palace in south London and the dismantling of the Great Exhibition, along with Roger Fenton’s records of the Crimean war, were the breakthrough pictures that won photography a popular following in later 1850s Britain. Le Gray’s “Tugboat”, the steamship’s dark plumes gorgeously echoed by the clouds, as emotively atmospheric as a painted seascape, marks not only steam power vanquishing sail but photography’s challenge to painting — the mechanical camera supplanting the hand and brush as witness and chronicler.

Elwes’ subject is today’s technology: master of ceremonies Zizi is a gender-neutral, translucent, shape-shifting artificial intelligence creation compèring drag artists whose joyful ambiguities draw attention to AI bias and the threat of facial recognition systems. I loved this noisy, bright, inventive piece, playfully locating questions about the blur between real and virtual/fictive in a cabaret converging the worlds of Weimar Berlin and Silicon Valley. 

Photography’s enchantment with technology is compellingly presented throughout as inseparable from its democratic impetus. The smartphone era makes us all photographers but, even by the 1870s, amateurs were catching moments of magic and wonder — an anonymous traveller passing through York station photographed its canopied roof, intricate, sweeping and strange, rising like an exotic monster, just as in 1952 an unknown transatlantic passenger took a shot through a window of a plane’s propellers spinning over the ocean. 

Intriguing, too, are the many early works that are formally perfect in ways anticipating modern abstracting impulses; they suggest how closely modernist aesthetic sensibility evolved from industrial design. In “Bevington & Sons, Leather Manufactory”, teenage Geoffrey Bevington photographed his family’s factory in Bermondsey, south London, in 1861 as a pattern of strict verticals and horizontals, as geometric and forbidding as conceptualists Bernd and Hilla Becher’s formal depictions of industrial ruins, “Silo for Coal” and “Cooling Tower” in the 1970s. And Andreas Gursky’s panoramas of Siemens factories in the 1990s are heralded in the aerial view of the massive assembly line “Employees’ Cars at Ford Factory”, photographed by Robert Smith for a commercial company in 1936. 

The ability to capture mass experience and collective memory was photography’s winning streak over painting in the golden mid-20th century. Even the surrealists, favouring personal unconscious experience as a subject, perceived this aspect. Man Ray chose Eugène Atget’s view of a crowd on the Place de la Bastille looking up at a solar eclipse in 1912 as the cover for La Révolution surréaliste in 1926. Here Atget’s stunning picture is in company with 20-year-old Marianne Breslauer’s “Paris”, street shots taken in 1929 with a Leica at unexpected angles, boldly cropped; sometimes Breslauer displayed them upside down.

Surrealism’s odd perspectives, strange reflections and snatched glimpses determined photography’s special flair for fragmentary, elusive urban life. Henri Cartier-Bresson’s “Palermo” (1972) frames insouciant kids chasing a bicycle wheel by a stately, slow funeral procession: a decisive instant, classical, monochrome, masterfully composed, where the metaphysical — life running on against the background of death — is fixed in a particular place and time. 

In his haunting series “Parties” (2006), Amirali Ghasemi depicts pulsing groups of young Iranians feverishly dancing but whitens their faces and exposed flesh to protect identities in a repressive regime: the figures appear as luminous, animated ghosts, like a surrealist dream — defiant and bittersweet.

Susan Sontag called the camera a predatory weapon, and certainly hopes for progress thread throughout, from Fenton and Stieglitz to Cartier-Bresson and Ghasemi. In contrast, the latest acquisitions mostly disappoint — the open-ended, masterful image has diminished into mere coercive identity politics in Liz Johnson Artur’s “Black Balloon Archive” and Tarrah Krajnak’s self-portraits which, according to the V&A, “critique the canon of westernised photography . . . as an indigenous woman of colour” — deadly dull. But then comes Noémie Goudal’s marvellous “Untitled (Giant Phoenix)” (2022), close-ups of palm trees staged as a jungle of monumental puzzle-like broken panels — a fresh, engaging approach to photographs as environmental protest.

This is a great moment for photography. The new galleries, the UK’s largest devoted to the medium, are a significant addition to the museum landscape, and symbolic of photography’s vital role in 21st-century culture. More than any other visual art form, photography is rooted in processes of social change; from now on the V&A will be able to show how it evolves to mirror the world in ever more complex ways.

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When it comes to photography, there are several technical terms and concepts that can seem overwhelming for beginners. One such term is “aperture.” Understanding aperture is crucial for achieving the desired depth of field and controlling the amount of light that enters your camera. In this article, we answer what is aperture and explain its significance in photography.

What is aperture?

At its core, aperture refers to the opening in the lens through which light enters the camera. It acts similarly to the pupil of our eyes, adjusting its size to regulate the amount of light reaching the camera’s sensor. Aperture is measured in f-stops, denoted by a series of numbers such as f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, and so on.

The concept of aperture may seem counterintuitive at first, as the f-stop numbers work backward. A smaller f-stop number, like f/2.8, indicates a larger aperture opening, while a larger f-stop number, such as f/16, represents a smaller aperture opening. Understanding this inverse relationship is crucial in grasping how aperture affects your photographs. There are small aperture blades in the lens which open and close depending on the aperture chosen.

Understanding depth of field

One of the primary effects of aperture is its influence on the depth of field. Depth of field refers to the range of sharpness in an image, from the foreground to the background. A large aperture opening (small f-stop number) results in a shallow depth of field, where the subject is in sharp focus while the background appears blurred. This effect is commonly used in portrait photography to create a pleasing separation between the subject and the background.

On the other hand, a smaller aperture opening (large f-stop number) increases the depth of field, resulting in more elements in the scene being in focus. Landscape photography often benefits from a larger depth of field to capture intricate details in both the foreground and the background.

Finding the correct exposure

Apart from controlling depth of field, aperture also plays a crucial role in managing the exposure of an image. Exposure refers to the amount of light that reaches the camera’s sensor. A larger aperture opening (small f-stop number) allows more light to enter the camera, resulting in a brighter image. Conversely, a smaller aperture opening (large f-stop number) restricts the amount of light, resulting in a darker image.

It’s important to note that aperture is just one of the three elements that affect exposure, along with shutter speed and ISO. These three factors work together in what is known as the exposure triangle. Adjusting one element affects the others, so finding the right balance between aperture, shutter speed, and ISO is crucial for achieving well-exposed images.

So, which aperture to choose?

When it comes to selecting the aperture for a particular shot, it often depends on the desired effect and the lighting conditions. As mentioned earlier, if you want a shallow depth of field with a blurred background, choose a larger aperture opening (small f-stop number). For landscapes or situations where you want everything in focus, opt for a smaller aperture opening (large f-stop number).

Modern cameras provide different shooting modes to assist beginners in choosing the right aperture setting. These modes include aperture priority (A or Av) and manual (M). In aperture priority mode, you set the desired aperture, and the camera automatically adjusts the shutter speed for proper exposure. Manual mode allows you to have full control over both aperture and shutter speed.

Aperture is a fundamental aspect of photography that affects both the depth of field and exposure of an image. By understanding how it works and experimenting with different settings, you can unleash your creativity. You can capture stunning photographs with precise control over what’s in focus and how much light enters your camera. So, grab your camera and start exploring the fascinating world of aperture!

In her first museum show in the United States, this Finnish artist uses her own XL body to bring a new emotional depth to the genre of setup photography.

The strange, discomfiting photographs and videos of the Finnish artist Iiu Susiraja push so many buttons that her provocative exhibition at MoMA PS1 should have been staged in an elevator — to paraphrase the theater critic Peter Marks. These powerful works take aim at a dizzying array of contemporary body image issues, obsessions and taboos, and from different angles, including fat shaming, fitness, obesity, standards of beauty, dysmorphia, self-loathing, self-love and of course sex.

Ambiguously titled “Iiu Susiraja: A Style Called a Dead Fish,” the show features 49 photographs and 13 short videos dating from 2008 to 2022. Most are self-portraits that show her wryly using as props a variety of domestic items — stuffed animals, kitchen utensils and especially food. But the main character is Susiraja, a blond woman nearly six feet tall, who is extremely large, if not morbidly obese, and usually stares out at us with lofty indifference. Like most artists whose work matters, Susiraja has no shame. She also presents something of an emotional blank, knowing that her viewers will fill it in.

Born in 1975 in Turku, Finland, where she still lives, Susiraja (pronounced ee-you susi-rah-yah) started out as a textile designer. In 2007, she took up photography and, turning the camera on herself, began to make starkly direct, somewhat humorous, painfully vulnerable self-portraits. They are complex yet widely appealing, even magnetic. Easy resolution of their meanings is impossible, which creates a rich internal narrative in the viewer, often starting with one’s feelings about one’s own body.

This richness may account for the extensive writing on Susiraja’s art, both inside and outside the art world, despite her relatively brief career. Her first solo gallery shows occurred in 2016 in Finland and the United States — the latter at Ramiken Crucible on the Lower East Side. (A show of new work and small sculptural objects is at Nino Mier Gallery in TriBeCa, through June 17.)

Susiraja’s pictures and videos riff on pornography, fashion photography and art history, while bringing a new emotional rawness to postmodern photography. The precedents for her D.I.Y setups include the French modernist Claude Cahun, and Americans like Hannah Wilke, Cindy Sherman, Jimmy DeSana, Laurie Simmons and James Casebere. In Susiraja’s performative use of her own body she seems most closely related to Wilke, whose final works fearlessly chronicled her unsuccessful fight with cancer, and to DeSana, whose visualization of gay beauty and fantasy, delineate, like hers, a region of otherness.

The show opens with several photographs from 2010, when Susiraja seems to have found her footing. Opposite the entrance, the declarative “Woman” confronts us directly. Seated, wearing all black, she is a monumental, forceful presence.

Crucial to this power is the helmet-like headgear she devised from a white knit cap with herrings stuck in the band, which resemble ear flaps. More herrings peek out of the purple knit gloves she wears, further enhancing the ritualistic stillness of the image. Nothing settles down here: man, woman, athlete, warrior, monarch, deity — all fomented by the artist’s size and her ingenious use of negligible materials.

A Valkyrie awaits in “Training” (also 2021), this time as a headdress embellished with braids (of bread) that turn Susiraja into a Wagnerian heroine. This is not to ignore the treadmill or the work’s title, but to suggest that the cudgel of exercise will be met with resistance.

It may be that Susiraja’s art divides into two halves: proud and heroic, and abject and heroic. As “Training” demonstrates, parts of both can often be found in the same artwork.

Nearby “Bad Legs,” also from 2010, goes mostly abject, although with undeniable belligerence. Evoking an early 1970s William Wegman video, it takes aim at the widespread obsession with legs as a measure of attractiveness and value. Here only the artist’s thick feet and calves are shown. Duct-taped to each leg is a clear plastic bag containing a dainty, slim-heeled pump, which doesn’t seem likely to fit the artist — a painful recognition that is stated with brutal honesty.

In “Gloves” (2019), Susiraja exaggerates the already extreme female ideal endemic to old masters painting. She appears in form-fitting underwear and strikes a Three Graces pose, touching a wood coat tree — like Eve proposing some apple tasting. A pair of yellow rubber gloves tucked into the bottom edge of her bra, and startling bruises that the artist has declined to explain, complete her outfit.

Susiraja displays a marked indifference to aesthetics, which may explain the “dead fish style” of the show’s title. Most of her photographs have an ersatz blandness; they are often inspired by whatever she finds around her apartment or her parents’ home where most of them are also taken. Their life stems from her mountainous body, and what she does to it.

But she juices up several images here by using brightly patterned fabrics as backdrops. For example, the expanses of exuberant plaid in “Sausage Cupid” (2019) are so overwhelming that you almost lose sight of the artist. She rises to the occasion, in a dark blue bathing suit, holding a blue umbrella festooned with strings of sausages, perhaps for Cupid to bestow on deserving couples.

Susiraja’s videos extend her images into short resonant actions, usually around a minute in length, and provide a kind of comic relief. In “Cow” she evokes an udder with a yellow rubber glove, a quart of milk and a shiny milk bucket. In “Stand,” possibly the most humiliating piece in the show, Susiraja fits a wire hanger around her head and hangs it on a coat tree, which requires her to stoop awkwardly. And in “Mirror,” she stands in the kitchen, laying curled pieces of bacon on the glass of a small hand mirror. Fastening the pieces together with some dozen yellow-headed hat pins, she creates a charming little thing: a temporary, miniature Post-Minimal sculpture that was probably soon eaten.

In her essay for the show’s catalog, Jody Graf, assistant curator and organizer of the show, writes of Susiraja, “Her photographs may be funny, but they are never a joke.” It’s slightly gnomic, this distinction, but it suggests that while Susiraja’s works can be amusing, unexpected and shocking, they are never at anyone’s expense. Funny in Susiraja’s case pulls us in, makes us sympathetic and possesses a depth whose bottom we may never reach.

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Iiu Susiraja: A Style Called a Dead Fish

Through Sept. 4 at MoMA PS1, 22-25 Jackson Avenue, Long Island City, Queens, (718) 784-2084); momaps1.org.