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Pre-setting the exposure triangle—aperture, shutter speed, and ISO—in advance is essential for capturing the best shots. Adjusting these settings in advance helps you control exposure, depth of field, and image quality. Being proactive ensures you're ready to capture great images anytime!

How I captured the above moody scenes:

As I approached these scenes in Central Park, I immediately knew I wanted to create a moody, dark and quiet feel to the images.

• As it was a bright sunny day, my camera’s ISO setting was pre-set to 100.

• My aperture (or f stop) setting was pre-set to f/5.6 as I wanted to create shallower depth of field images but also to allow a bit of additional light to travel through my lens as I entered the denser areas of the park.

• While walking in the park, I fluctuated my shutter speed setting between 1/160 and 1/40 - to let more or less light into my camera but also to add a slight blur in the images. For the middle image featured above, I specifically lowered my shutter speed to 1/40 as I wanted to smooth out any ripples in the body of water. 

• Pre-setting my ISO and aperture (or f-stop) before entering the park allowed me to quickly adjust my shutter speed, making it easy to capture photographs of the scene.

• Note, the lens on my Fuji x100F, has a variable neutral density filter which is helpful when working in very bright conditions. Neutral density filters are useful for bright sunny conditions; they are an invaluable tool for photographers who work outdoors.

Click here to learn more about the exposure triangle.

As always, best of luck!

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