One of the main points David makes in Chasing the Look is Get the Best Amount of Light In, But In the Best Way. Changing your aperture and shutter speed have profound effects on your photographs, and which combo you choose depends entirely on the look that you are after. Let’s take a look at two shots I took tonight during the snow for an example:

15 seconds at f/22

1/2 second at f/4

Everything else is essentially the same: ISO 800, 36mm focal length, same post-processing.  The exposures are the same, even though the aperture and shutter speed vary drastically between the two images.

For the first image I chose a small aperture to give me the nice starburst effect on the light, which caused a long, slow shutter speed, which causes the falling snow to blur together to a point that you can’t really tell it’s snowing.

On the second I opened up to a larger aperture in order to get a quicker shutter speed to allow the falling snow to still appear in the final image.

Which one is correct?  Well, that all depends on the look that you are after. Personally, I like the first one, as I’m kind of a sucker for starbursts (if you couldn’t tell from some of my other images).

Which one do you prefer?