It’s not. Just not just the point and shoot kind of thing that most people think it is.Take Aperture, Shutter Speed and ISO for instance. Three things that most people haven’t even heard of. Yet they’re the basis for the process of getting an amazing photo. One of the reasons most people don’t see them is because they can’t change them on their camera. Point and Shoots can’t do advanced things.Aperture is the hole the light goes through in your camera to hit the sensor, the digital thingy that has taken the place of film. In automatic modes you can’t change the settings of the aperture, they are set by the camera. In more advanced cameras you can play with the aperture settings, making it bigger or smaller when you take the shot. This will increase or decrease the amount of light that hits the sensor.Shutter Speed is just that, the speed of the shutter. When you click the button, it goes opens the shutter, letting the light through the aperture to hit the sensor. When you have a slow shutter speed, you let a lot of light in. When you have a fast shutter speed, you let less light in. When things start to get blurry in low light or because they’re too fast, it means your shutter speed is too long for the movement that is happening and the available light. The answer is to decrease and shutter speed and increase the light. You can increase the light by using lights, a flash, or by increasing the ISO.ISO is the “speed” of the sensor to capture the image. In film days you got a roll of ISO 200 film and took what pictures you could with that. A higher ISO means that the picture is exposed faster on the film meaning you get the exposed photo in less time. The tradeoff is that when you expose things faster the image gets grainy. It’s not very noticeable at low ISO’s but as you get higher, it gets grainier. Higher ISO’s do come in handy in low light situations, like shooting during the evening or shooting a band play inside. If you can use a flash to get the light you need but it might no be appropriate then a high ISO can help.Between shutter speed, aperture and ISO you can some crazy things with photos. If you want freeze action, you’ll want a fast shutter speed, but if you want things blurred you can slow it down.Sounds easy right? Well not always.There are a lot of other variables that affect how the photo ends up. There’s the lens you have on the camera, the distance from you to your subject, the distance from your subject to the background, how fast they’re moving, the intensity and direction of light thats hitting the camera and subject and a whole host of other things to think about.Needless to say, it ends up being a intensive process to get the experience required to think of a photo, set it up and get the exact photo you want. And for it to look good.A friend told me that your first 10,000 photos are gonna be junk when you first start taking photographs. Remember, I’m thinking ones with excellent light, color, and composition not your party shots from last weekend.I think I’m photo 492?