One of the most frustrating things for me once I got out of auto mode on my DSLR was choosing an appropriate aperture for a particular image. I didn’t have a problem understanding at a technical level things like using wide apertures for a shallow depth of field or narrow apertures for expansive depth of field, but from a creative standpoint, when your lens goes from f2.8-f22 (or beyond), there’s still plenty of room to play around in and get agitated over.

In this post, I am going to review what I’ve learned through pestering friends and colleagues, trial and error, and through reading various articles and texts on using aperture as a creative force rather than just one to adjust the amount of light coming through the lens to the sensor to get the meter to the center of the dial.

In the book, Understanding Exposure: How to Shoot Great Photographs with a Film or Digital Camera (Updated Edition), the author, Bryan Peterson,  goes through all the basics of light control and exposure. But one of the most helpful things I found was his breakdown by aperture of when to choose one or another based on the creative purpose of your image. From a creative standpoint, you first should ask yourself, “am I telling a story, or am I capturing a singular theme or subject?”

In storytelling, any good story will have a well developed beginning, middle, and ending. In photographic story telling you have a foreground, middle ground, and background that you want equally well developed by achieving clarity in all three areas. In story telling exposures you want images that show great depth of field so you would use narrow apertures (f32, f22, f16) and wide angle lenses/short focal lengths to achieve reasonable sharp focus in the foreground, middle ground, and background of your composition.

Conversely when you have a singular theme, you want to isolate the subject and concentrate attention only on a single subject to the exclusion of all other elements in the composition. In this creative case, you want only the subject to be in sharp focus and the other elements rendered unimportant or out of focus. You achieve this with using wide apertures (f5.6, f4, f2.8) and longer lenses/longer focal lengths.

What if it’s not a story telling opportunity or a single theme opportunity? Does it matter what aperture you choose? Who cares, right? What if you’re walking along and you come across an unusual coin on the pavement and you decide to take an image of that coin with the pavement as a background? Since the coin and pavement are at virtually the same focal distance, depth of field is not a creative issue.  You could literally choose any aperture that gave you the exposure you wanted. However, most lenses have a “sweet spot” in the middle of their aperture range. F8 and f11 are “middle of the road” apertures that often offer the sharpest image and greatest contrast in exposure in a given lens. So, when facing a creative opportunity where the subjects are at the same focal distance, choose the aperture which gives you the best image quality – most often f8 and f11.

I made this chart to keep in my camera bag, but quickly found it became second nature. I can’t recommend any more highly Bryan Peterson’s book. Get it. He goes into so much more detail and has excellent photographic examples to go with each instance and concept.

 I also recommend Exposure Photo Workshop: Develop Your Digital Photography Talent because of the specific exercises it offers and a slightly more technical coverage of the concepts of exposure.