But until most of those things become second nature to you, it's easy to tie yourself in knots trying to remember them all. So don't try. Learn a few pointers, practice them, then come back and learn a few more. Approach photography as a game to be mastered gradually, and you'll not only take much better pictures, but you'll have a lot more fun doing it. Although we'll talk about both, we'll need to start with some of the technical considerations.
Shutter speed determines how long the shutter stays open to allow light in.
Aperture describes how wide the lens opens to let in light for a given shot. If you don't know how you want to balance these variables for a given picture, go ahead and set your camera on its automatic or program setting and let it make those decisions for you. You'll usually get decent shots. I use one of my camera's automatic settings about 75 percent of the time. But the more experience you get, the more often you will want to exercise control over how those variables are balanced.