By: Aiden Tijerina

My name is Aiden Tijerina, and I am a 5th grade scholar at LEARN Excel. I have been at Excel for the past six years. I love coming to school here because I love seeing my friends and I know I am being challenged in my learning. My teachers make sure to teach us in fun ways and give us fun activities to make sure that we learn certain topics. One of my favorite parts of coming to school here is that we have awesome elective classes. They offer drama, tumbling, dancing, photography, videography, fashion design and chorus. I thought I would choose to take photography.

I am enjoying photography because two things I enjoy are taking photos and taking classes that challenge me. Our teacher, Mr. Sherrod, is strict and cool and he pushes us to work harder.  I have to pay attention and listen because the class is hard and that’s how I like it.

A few things I have learned is how to work ISO, shutter speed and aperture. For example, shutter speed is when you hear that click in the camera. It captures light when it’s open. So it depends how much light there is outside or in a room to determine how fast you set the shutter speed. So a fast shutter would be used for motion, otherwise you would get a blurry photo. Right now I am learning about white balance and all the different types of lights.

These three basic skills, ISO, shutter speed, and aperture, are the most important to learn. They all control your light. If you have one little mistake on those, your picture would be too light or dark. You wouldn’t want the person in the photo to have raccoon eyes!

I know I will use what I have learned in the future because I am planning on taking pictures of my family and friends. Plus, I think I may use it to invent a way to make cameras even better and I can be a photographer as my side job.