Throughout the many years that photography has been in the world, photographers have found their own ways to take the photos they’ve wanted. Some have shared their ideas on how to take better photos and have established concepts that are still known and taught in the present world of photography.

And while photography has been around since the 1800s, the term exposure triangle wasn’t popularized until much later in the year 1990 and 2005. The first concept of the exposure triangle was introduced in the year 1990 by Bryan Peterson in his book titled “Understanding Photography”. In his book, he called the idea the “photographic triangle” which consisted of aperture, shutter speed, and film. There was no drawing of the actual triangle itself though. It wasn’t until the year 2005 when the term “exposure triangle” started gaining traction. The term came from the book named “The better photo guide to digital photography” that was written by Jim Miotke. He based it off the ideas Peterson explored in his book. He also included a visual representation of the triangle in his book.

So what actually is the exposure triangle? And how does it work? The exposure triangle is an idea that in order to capture a well exposed photograph, you have to balance the exposure of the photo between 3 settings. Aperture, shutter speed, and ISO.

Aperture is how open the actual camera lens is and how much light it is letting in to hit the sensor. It also determines the depth of field which is basically how much of the image is in focus. This setting is measured in what are called F-stops. Basically the higher the F-stop number, the less the lens is opened and less light is allowed to hit the sensor. This creates a greater depth of field which means more of the image is in focus. A higher F-stop number would be good for landscape photography. Now if you were to have lower F-stop numbers, the lens would open more and let in more light to hit the sensor. This would result in a more shallow depth of field which means the background would be more blurry and out of focus. A lower F-stop number would be good for portrait photography.

Shutter speed is just how much time the camera shutter is open for when taking a photograph and being exposed to light. This is measured in seconds or fractions of a second. A faster shutter speed like 1/1000 sec allows the photographer to be able to capture fast moving objects and freeze them. This would be ideal for sports photography, or moving cars. Now if you had a slower shutter speed like several seconds, then you would be able to add a sort of blur effect to things like waterfalls or fireworks.

ISO is the last part of the exposure triangle. All it is basically is how sensitive the camera sensor is to light. A low ISO number is used when you are taking pictures in bright conditions and you don’t really need more light added to the image. A higher ISO would be added when you are taking pictures in a dark environment and need more light in your image. However there is one downside to this setting. The higher the ISO is, the more noise is introduced into your image. So it is only recommended to add ISO when you really need it as it sacrifices image quality with the digital noise(grain).

Those three settings are what make up the exposure triangle. In order to have a well exposed image, you have to play with these three settings in order to make one properly exposed image. At times, you may have to sacrifice one setting in order to change another one and get the look you were going for in your photo, which in return, may diminish the quality of the image. All you can do, is figure out the best possible balance between the three settings that gets you the best possible photograph.