YOU JUST GOT A NEW CAMERA HURRAY!!! but you don't know how to use it. Here is everything you need to know to start photography.
All photography can be broken down into a few principals however this is going to be as simple as it gets. I hate blog posts that spend the whole article talking about something other than what I researched so here are the basics.
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Composition
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Lighting
Each of these concepts will get their own blog post but this article will cover the extreme basics. At the end will be a quick assignment for you to try to start understanding how they work in your camera.
Aperture is F stop, it adjusts how open the iris is. In other words it controls how much light is let into the lens before it reaches the sensor or film. This controls depth of field and exposure. Terms I will cover in the other blog posts.
Shutter Speed is the speed that the lens curtain closes at. This is measured in fractions of a second and is mainly displayed as a fraction (1/100, 1/1000, so on). This controls how long light is exposed to the sensor or film. It will effect the crispness of the photo ie motion blur and exposure.
ISO I don't know what it stands for because that is somewhat useless information. HOWEVER, this is going effect exposure so the metric is important. It establishes the sensitivity of the photo. With film your whole roll will be the same ISO with digital it can be changed. This effects exposure and grain or fuzziness of the picture.
The first three are the three points of the exposure triangle. Each one can bring up or down the exposure how you use them is determined by the stylistic choice you make and what you are shooting.
Composition or how the shot is set up. Composition is the balance or imbalance of a photo their are myriad of styles and options you can go with basic rules are going to be covered in their own blog posts (articles) but for now know what that means.
Lighting this one has two schools natural and artificial. Natural is created by the scene and artificial is motivated by flash or other forms of lighting equipment ie reflection cards.
As far as you are concerned it is time to move to your camera and find out how you control the first three of these principals. Once you know how to adjust them you can go on to the next post for each and learn how to manipulate them for maximum creativity.
Get shooting!