Ever wondered how your camera's exposure works?  How to get the really shallow depth of field or stop a long jumper in mid flight?  Read on!  If you would like to improve your photography then you absolutely must know this, backwards, forwards and upside down.  One day it should 'just click' and you get it, but until then watch this video a lot until you do. 

Your camera does a great job of calculating the exposure with its built in light meter, BUT it has no idea what type of photograph you want to create.  I mention in the video in my mind's eye I create photos in aperture priority, then transmit those settings to the camera.  As you may know my primary subject matter is portraits and I prefer to have a shallow DOF (Depth of Field) and then set everything from there.  ISO should be as low as possible, but not at the expense of a sharp image with a slow shutter speed.  The magic number in shutter speeds is 1/60th of a second, which is usually fast enough to capture people standing still without any motion blur and will also keep camera shake to a minimum.