https://lcamtuf.coredump.cx/photo_basics/ Photography for geeks Billions of people carry cameras in their pockets and use them to document their lives. Yet, despite the democratization of photo hardware, the knowledge of photographic techniques remains elusive. Countless books, webpages, and YouTube videos purport to offer advice, but tend to dwell on topics of little consequence to most hobbyists - such as shopping for gear or memorizing made-up rules of composition that seldom make for a good shot. I'm not a pro, but I dabbled in photography for more than two decades - and after making countless mistakes, I have gotten fairly good. This page is an impassioned contrarian take on what it takes to snap great photos, along with a set of simple experiments that can be repeated at home. [01] [03] [05] [08] Part I: Light It is said that composition is the most important aspect of a photograph. I disagree. An intriguing interplay of light and shadows can make a discarded candy wrapper look profound. An unflattering light makes even the most expertly framed scenery look pedestrian and dull. Monitors and photographic paper are capable of faithfully reproducing only a tiny portion of the luminance range our eyes can perceive. It follows that in a photograph or a video, shadows and highlights are not just a mild distraction: they control what can and cannot be seen. Good photographers exploit this property to accentuate what matters and conceal what does not. Inexperienced hobbyists abdicate the responsibility to an algorithm in the camera. They often end up with competent results, but seldom with what they had in mind. Most novices think that illumination is entirely out of their control, but it isn't so. A solid grasp of the fundamentals allows one to leverage the environment. When shooting outdoors, you might ask your subject to stand near an exterior wall to eliminate the harsh shadows that plague most vacation shots. Indoors, you might move toward a nearest window or stay clear of recessed lights. To understand how these tricks can help, let's talk about some of the key properties and types of light. Point and area lights One of the most consequential ways to classify light sources is by their apparent size. Some sources are so small or so distant that they behave as if all the light rays emanated from a single point in space. A well-known example is the sun on a clear day. Inside your house, the same can be said of a bare lightbulb or a flashlight, especially if placed some distance away. The shadows cast by such sources are intense and sharp-edged. The transition between light and shadow is abrupt because a point source instantenously disappears from view when an opaque item gets in the way. Other sources behave as if the light emanated from a larger surface, be it because of the nature of the emitter or due to some apparatus that scatters the rays. A familiar mega-scale area light is the sky on an overcast day. Indoors, a common example is a bedside lamp equipped with a shade. Area lights produce soft shadows because there are many possible intermediate states between the source being fully visible and fully occluded. The softness is proportional to how large the source is and how closely it is situated. Point sources have their uses in photographic work, but more often than not, they get in the way. In landscape photography, they create jarring contrast, particularly when snapping buildings or trees. In portrait work, they produce unflattering and distracting shadows, especially around the nose. The phenomenon can be seen in the following picture: [10n-point-] For simplicity and consistency, I am using a porcelain figurine as a stand-in for a model. In both of these examples, I placed the source a bit to the right of the camera. The problem with point lights gets more severe if the source is positioned overhead. In such circumstances, eyes appear dark and sunken, and your model may end up springing a Hitleresque mustache. Again, such lighting can be sometimes employed for dramatic effect - but it's more common for it to ruin the shot: [20-midday-] As hinted earlier, the remedy can be simple. Outdoors, a nearby reflective surface, such as a light-colored wall, can provide diffuse illumination that makes the shadows less evident. Indoors, staying away from recessed lighting is a good habit. Finding a night lamp or a window on the shady side of the house can also help. Floodlights and spotlights Another noteworthy quality of a light source is its beam shape. A bare lightbulb is omnidirectional and unfocused. It illuminates all nearby items fairly evenly, but the intensity falls off fast when you take a couple of steps back. A flashlight, in contrast, produces a collimated beam that lights up only a tiny slice of your field of view, but can carry up to a hundred yards. Wide-angle lights ("floodlights") are the bread and butter of photographic trade. In addition to providing uniform and predictable illumination, they also excel at isolating subjects from their backgrounds. If your subject is placed near the light but some distance away from the background, and if you set the exposure right, light falloff ensures that all the background clutter neatly fades from view. Narrow-beam spotlights, on the other hand, tend to create extreme contrast and usually need to be offset by a floodlight to make the picture work. In particular, if you want to create a night scene of someone holding a flashlight or standing in the headlights of a car, you need to provide additional "fill" illumination from a more uniform source - or shoot an underexposed photo at dusk. It follows that accidental spotlights, such as recessed lighting or sunbeams coming through windows, are best avoided unless you have a way to offset their undesirable effects. That said, a well-employed spotlight can add value. The following picture uses a gentle spotlight to bring out the face while keeping the rest of the figurine in a subtle shade: [25-spotlig] Illumination angle The next light property to pay attention to is the angle of illumination. We already discussed the issues with overhead lights. The other undesirable extreme is a light source placed in about the same axis as your lens, for example when using an on-camera flash. This type of illumination prevents the formation of natural shadows that convey information about the curvature of three-dimensional objects, making faces look round and flat: [30-on-came] Once again, creative light positioning can be used for dramatic effect; for example, a light shining from below makes your model look sinister and out of this world (perhaps emerging from the depths of hell). That said, in most situations, the extremes are best avoided. Placing the light slightly to the side, perhaps at 20-30 degrees from the axis of the lens, is often the best starting point. Color temperature The final light quality we're going to discuss is color temperature. In the olden days, most man-made lighting - from candles to incandescent lightbulbs - had an inherent orange-yellow hue. Today, this is no longer a physical constraint, but most CCFL and LED lamps still mimic the effect, aiming for a color temperature between 2,700 K ("soft white" or "warm white") and 3,500 K ("neutral white"). This is not just a force of habit: this type of illumination is easy on the eyes and nicely complements skin tones. Higher color temperatures with a stronger blue cast are reserved for factory floors, workshops, and other areas where maximum light intensity and superior color rendition matter more than good looks. In outdoor settings, color temperatures dip to around 2,000 K during sunrise and sunset; together with lower light intensity and favorable illumination angles, these "magic hours" are some of the best times for outdoor photography. During the day, the temperature will usually go up to about 5,500 K, and if the sky is overcast, it can reach 6,500 K or so. Moonlight isn't any bluer, but nights may appear this way when viewed through the windows of a warmly-lit home. Because of that, it's a habit of most photographers and filmmakers to add a dark blue cast to night scenes - and audiences have come to expect it as a visual cue. You can see an approximation of the difference between incandescent ("tungsten") and daylight color temperatures below: [40-dayligh] It's not that one color temperature is inherently better than another; orange cast can be more flattering in portrait work, but a photographer can add and remove it at will. In the era of photographic film, one would place a piece of colored glass in front of the lens. Today, the adjustment is as simple as moving a slider in a photo editing program or selecting a particular white balance setting in the camera. That said, if no action is taken, an in-camera algorithm will try to remove any "errornous" color cast - and the result might not be what you aimed for. Another gotcha is what happens when two lights with different color temperatures illuminate a single scene. In such circumstances, automatic white balance algorithms will struggle, and if the illumination is harsh, you end up with a mess of alternating yellow- and blue-tinted shadows that don't look right. Still, if the light is diffuse and white balance is picked by hand, mixing color temperatures can pay off: [42-dog] It must be said that the color temperature model is fairly simplistic: it represents a one-dimensional continuum, from red to blue, in a two-dimensional color space. Some light sources can exhibit other tints: for example, early fluorescent lamps had an unpleasant greenish hue that made skin appear unhealthy and pale. Today, Western filmmakers intentionally replicate this look when portraying the Soviet-era world behind the Iron Curtain; a good example is the acclaimed HBO miniseries "Chernobyl". In any case: on-camera controls might not offer enough flexibility to fix all color issues, but most photo editing software has an additional white balance slider on the continuum from purple to green. Getting creative with light As noted earlier, a skilled photographer doesn't need to haul thousands of dollars in lighting gear everywhere they go. It is often enough to take note of existing illumination sources and reason about how they affect the scene. It pays to remember that, owing to the nature of camera sensors and computer displays, seemingly small differences in illumination have a huge impact on the appearance of the photograph. Whether you're using existing or added lights, it's best not to put too much faith in on-camera algorithms. Automatic exposure usually works to preserve detail in the highlights, but in a high-contrast scene, it might make everything else too dark. Some cameras attempt to compress the dynamic range ("HDR") to salvage both highlights and shadows, but this can produce an artificial look: rough skin, unnaturally bright shadows, and weird halos in the areas of high contrast. It's better to stay in the driver's seat. Even on devices without manual exposure controls, it's usually still possible to dial in exposure compensation, or tap on the screen to set metering priority. But if your camera does support manual exposure, you might be surprised how easy it is to use after a while. For those who want to invest in photographic lighting, I recommend starting small - perhaps with a pair of battery-powered LED tubes such as Genaray Beacon or Nanlite PavoTube 15C. This accessory provides a neatly diffused light that's more than enough for taking portraits of people and pets. But above all, unlike most other studio gear, it does not require any setup. You can grab it at a moment's notice, hold it in one hand, and have some casual fun. To illustrate the potential of such simple tools, let's have a look at this snapshot taken in a darkened living room. I put one cheap LED tube upright behind my wife's back, pointed toward a bookshelf on the wall. I held another tube in front, above the camera, to exaggerate the curvature of cheekbones and eyebrows. The darkness in between did the rest to achieve an unsettling, low-key look: [43-backlig] For the next shot, we moved into the hallway. Another light pointed at her back introduced a subtle glowing silhouette - a flattering look that separates the subject from the background. I placed the main light a bit lower than before to make facial features appear more neutral and to reduce shadows: [44-backlig] Some LED tubes offer not just white light, but can be adjusted to achieve a full spectrum of colors. Although it's best to master traditional lighting first, such color variations can create a wide range of interesting effects. For example, if you want to recreate the popular "night club" vibe of some contemporary films and video games, you'd want to make the background blue or violet, and then bathe the foreground in magenta or red. Of course, there are limits to what LED tubes can do; for one, they aren't particularly bright and can't produce a collimated beam to selectively illuminate a small portion of the frame. It follows that serious studio photographers may also benefit from continuous floodlights such as Westcott Solix, as well as focusable spotlights such as Genaray Torpedo. Shopping for lights can be tricky. Modern cameras perform well in low-light conditions, so photographic lights usually don't need to be exceptionally bright, but they should be matched to the intended use. When it comes to light output, there are two units of measurement you might encounter in product brochures: the lumen (lm) and the lux (lx). Lumens tell you the overall luminous output of a source, no matter which direction the light goes; lux tell you brightly the lamp will illuminate a unit of surface area right in front of it. The latter is more useful for photography, and it's good to memorize several points of reference. On a clear day at noon, you might get up to 100,000 lx in the sun and 20,000 lx in the shade; a cover of clouds can bring it down to 2,000 lx or less. Household lighting is quite variable, but measurements tend to hover around 50 to 300 lx. Urban stret illumination in pedestrian areas is around 5-10 lx. A typical candle scores about 1 lx from one meter away, hinting at the historical origins of this unit of measurement. Last but not least, moonlight is usually around 0.1 lx. Pocket photographic lights, such as Genaray Powerbank 96A or Luxli Fiddle, deliver around 150-200 lx at 1 meter at maximum power. This makes them quite suitable for indoor close-up photography, but fairly useless outdoors, at least until dusk. Handheld LED tubes peak around 400-600 lx; that's enough to provide an outdoor fill light early or late in the day. Affordable AC-powered lamps, such as Westcott Solix or Genaray Torpedo, usually deliver around 3,000-6,000 lx at 1 m. Finally, if you absolutely need it, larger (and costlier) spotlights can pump out 50,000 lx or more. Part II: The optical path Right after illumination, the optical system of your camera has an outsized impact on the appearance of your photos and video clips. This does not mean you need to go broke and buy a bulky camera with an array of interchangeable lens; it suffices to know when to zoom in, when to zoom out, and how to control the focus within the scene. The answers to these questions may seem obvious, but there's more to it than meets the eye. Focal length, aka zoom "Focal length" is a fancy way of describing the camera's field of view. A wide-angle lens with a short focal length can capture everything that's happening in a crowded bar; meanwhile, telephoto optics let you fill the frame with a single soda can from across the room. In theory, increasing the focal length is the same as snapping a wide-angle photo and then cropping and magnifying the center part. In practice, without optical magnification, you quickly run out of pixels and end up with a blurry mess. At first blush, focal length may seem uninteresting: after all, you want your subject to occupy a reasonable portion of the frame, and for many novices, this dictates the zoom level they choose. What they overlook is that the size of the subject can be also controlled by moving the camera closer or farther away; in effect, there are countless combinations of distance and focal length settings that preserve the scale of the primary object they're trying to photograph. Let's demonstrate this effect using another porcelain figurine against the backdrop of a cluttered living room: [50nn-focal] I captured this sequence by taking a step back every time I increased the focal length, so the size of the figurine's face didn't change. Yet, the pictures differ in many ways. For one, at wide angles, distant objects appear much smaller, and a good portion of the room ends up in the frame. As the focal length increases, the perspective becomes less pronounced, and field of view narrows all the way down to a single leaf of a household plant. But there's something else happening too: in the first picture, the figurine appears to have a slender face, pouty lips, and a relatively large nose. As the sequence progresses, the face takes on a more rounded shape. This is another manifestation of the same optical phenomenon: at short focal lengths, features closer to the camera look larger, even if the distance differential is a fraction of an inch. It's why cell phone selfies usually look off. The slideshow is annotated with focal length numbers for a 35mm camera sensor, also known as "full frame" (a throwback to the days of photographic film). To achieve a similar effect with a smaller sensor, the focal length would need to be proportionally less. Unfortunately, when buying gear, it's not always clear if the manufacturer is talking about "35mm equivalent" focal length or about nominal measurements of the optical path. The former is common in cell phones; the latter in prosumer cameras. Either way, in the 35mm world, there are several reference points to memorize: * The length of about 20-22mm corresponds to the natural field of view of human vision. Lenses in this vicinity are ideal for photographing nearby crowds, snapping photos for real estate listings, or filming your kids playing on the beach. That said, any features in the periphery of the frame will appear distorted. * Focal lengths around 40mm project a 1:1 image onto the sensor, as if you looked at your surroundings through a rectangular viewfinder with no optics at all. This captures lifelike perspective with little distortion. For historical reasons, the most popular lens choice in this neighborhood is actually 50mm - a versatile if unassuming choice for indoor and outdoor scenes where you don't need to cram too much into the frame. * Focal length of 85mm is considered to be ideal for professional portrait work. It is long enough to virtually eliminate distortion, but short enough to allow the photographer to stand reasonably close the the model. * Focal lengths of 200mm and above are most commonly employed for nature photography, sports, and for spying on people from afar. Smartphones with zoom optics usually feature focal lengths corresponding to about 20-80mm in the world of full-frame sensors. Past that point, the phone usually switches to digital magnification, and picture quality takes a nosedive. Depth of field Depth of field is a property of the optical system that determines what slice of the scene will appear sharp when you focus the lens at a particular distance. Shallow DOF is a wonderful tool for isolating subjects and hiding background clutter, as shown in the sequence below: [60n-shallo] The depth of field in your photos will depend on three things: * The focal length of the lens. Telephoto optics tend to produce shallow DOF; wide-angle lenses keep almost everything in focus most of the time. * The distance to your subject. In close quarters, the DOF might be measured in fractions of an inch; toward the horizon, it can span a mile or more. * The aperture of the lens, aka the relative diameter of the optical path. Large apertures (numerically low f-values, around f /1.2 to f/1.8) exhibit extremely shallow DOF and create a pleasing blur. Smaller apertures, around f/4 and above, provide relatively little latitude for creative DOF work. Although most people find shallow DOF quite agreeable, it can interfere with landscape shots and street photography. In such situations, the simplest solution is to reduce the aperture (increase the f-number). This is akin to squinting your eyes; in addition to making the picture sharper, it also reduces the amount of light hitting the sensor, so you need to crank up the exposure time to cancel out the loss. The optics of cell phone cameras usually exhibit extremely wide DOF at short focal lengths and do not expose aperture controls, but selective blurring might be doable when the lens are zoomed in. Barring this, some phones employ algorithms that try to estimate depth and selectively apply software blur to portraits. This doesn't always work well, but the results might be acceptable every now and then. Focus point Even if you are not angling for a shallow DOF, the camera still needs to be focused on the subject to produce crisp-looking photographs. The actual task of adjusting the optics to maximize sharpness is almost always delegated to the camera's autofocus mechanism. That said, it's still up to the photographer to tell the AF mechanism which portion of the image to look at while making the adjustments; in the absence of this input, the system may default to a point in the center of the frame, lock in on a random high-contrast edge, or pick what looks like a face. Almost every camera is equipped with a joystick or a touch interface to guide the AF system. In portrait work, it is customary to focus on the eyes; we're instinctively drawn to this part of the face, so any accidental focus errors tend to stand out: [70nnn-focu] If the model's head is titled, it's safer to pick the eye closer to the camera or that is otherwise more prominent; again, there's no one correct answer, but focusing on the less visible eye usually doesn't look right: [72nn-focus] If the photographer wishes to draw attention to some other element of the composition while keeping a person's face in the frame, it's best to make sure the eyes are robustly out of focus, and not just slightly blurred: [74-focus] Portraits aside: when setting up landscape shots, many novices pick the horizon as the focus point. That can be a mistake: it's better to select a point about one third of the way between the nearest and the most distant plane in the photograph. As noted earlier, DOF increases with distance, so this approach maximizes the odds that both the foreground and the background are going to look just right. The same one-third rule works for macro shots. Part III: Color and tone Color theory is a peculiar discipline that studies contemporary color preferences and design fads to develop a set of immutable principles that purportedly govern all uses of color in creative work. As with the "ironclad" rules of composition, I recommend skepticism - especially if the author brings out color wheels and starts drawing squiggles between equidistant points. At the same time, it must be said that color and tone can be what separates a second-rate photograph from a memorable one. To illustrate, let's look at the potential evolution of this vacation shot deliberately chosen for its mediocrity: [80-fixing] The final photo appears to be better illuminated and more closely conforms to the popular depictions of the mountainous desert terrain around the Hoover Dam. Indeed, some cell phones automatically apply similar tone mapping tricks to photos taken in full sunlight; this happens without the photographer's knowledge and sometimes produces unexpected results. On-the-scene adjustments versus photo editing Some color and tone tweaks can be taken care of when taking the photo, but many others are accomplished more easily in front of a computer screen. Pay no mind to purists: even in the era of photographic film, there was no such a thing as an "unaltered" photograph. The choice of process chemicals, paper, and enlarger settings profoundly affected the appearance of the final print. Deceptive edits may be a no-no, but absolute purity was never a meaningful goal. At this point, we must note that the range of postprocessing options at your disposal is far greater if you capture photos as "raw" files (DNG, CR3, NEF, etc). Most cameras default to JPEG - a compact, 8-bit file format that keeps only the bare minimum of data needed to display the original image. In the Hoover Dam example shown earlier, JPEG compression would have destroyed the texture of the clouds and the detail in the blown-out highlight in my son's hair. Luckily, the raw file I captured contained enough information to bring out that extra detail when the correct slider was dialed down in a software tool. Virtually all mid-range digital cameras have the ability to capture raw images, but the feature is not always available on mobile phones. That said, at least some Huawei, Samsung, and Apple handsets support raw images. The photos taken in this mode take up more storage space and can't be directly opened with some programs, but if you're serious about photography, you should give it a go. There is a wide selection of programs for editing raw images. The gold standard used to be Adobe Lightroom, but after the app moved to an exploitative subscription model, perhaps the best alternative is Capture One ($300 for a perpetual license), followed by Darktable (free). Most other general-purpose image editors, such as GIMP or Affinity Photo, are also capable of working with raw images, but lack useful photographic workflow features, such as catalog management. This matters if you're trying to quickly sort through several hundred photos, or apply the same adjustments across the entire lot. Shifting the color balance In the world of digital cameras, color balancing is implemented in software: after the picture is taken, the readings from the sensor are shifted by an algorithm to obtain neutral whites or achieve some other algorithmic goal. When working with JPEG files, the results of this transformation are baked into the final image and cannot be fully undone; but when shooting raw, the original sensor data is preserved, and a full range of adjustments is possible down the line. Whenever the in-camera algorithm misses the mark, the most convenient way of removing an undesirable color cast is to point the photo editor's white balance picker at a portion of the picture meant to have a neutral shade of gray. This may be a stainless steel appliance, a section of the pavement, a white wall, a piece of clothing, or a special calibration card. If the result is unsatisfactory or if no suitable target is found, color balance can be also adjusted with manual sliders: "temperature" for moving from yellow to blue and "tint" for purple to green. Of course, one doesn't need to seek a perfectly neutral look. As noted earlier, flattering orange hues are sought after in portrait work; subtle orange grading is the secret behind the good looks of most TV anchors on the news. Outside of portrait work, we are primed to interpret a yellow-orange cast in a well-lit photograph as an indicator of a warm summer day; while a shift toward blues might signal moonlight, frigid cold, or a sterile high-tech environment. Finally, greenish tints give the impression of an inhospitable place; while low-key purples, violets, and reds are the pop-cultural stand-ins for danger or lust. As a practical example, consider this sequence of edits, starting with a neutral white balance calibrated on the pillows, and then introducing warmer and cooler tints: [100-neutra] Exposure adjustments Along with color balance, exposure is one of the most important postprocessing tweaks you can make. Dark, underexposed ("low-key") photos tend to have an ominous appearance, and - with the right lighting and color tint - can imitate nighttime takes. On the other end of the spectrum, overexposed low-contrast ("high-key") shots may have an angelic vibe or signal a futuristic, high-tech setting of some sort. Strictly speaking, exposure settings can't be changed after the fact: the picture is taken with a predefined shutter time, lens aperture, and sensor amplifier gain (also known as the ISO setting, in another throwback to the era of film photography). It follows that gross exposure errors, such as shooting a completely overexposed frame, usually aren't recoverable. Luckily, when working with raw images, there's still some data captured in the highlights and in the shadows, giving you room to fine-tune the exposure down the line. In essence, photo editing software may shift pixel values up or down to simulate the light hitting the sensor for a bit more or a bit less time. The usual viable range of such adjustments is plus / minus two "stops"; a stop means a two-fold increase or decrease in exposure time, so the range translates to exposure times between 25% and 400% of the starting point. The following photo of a dog illustrates the effect of adjusting exposure +/- 1 stop: [110n-expos] In this instance, the underexposed photo is pretty interesting, perhaps reminiscent of a gray, rainy day in the fall. Again, there are limits to what can be done in software: the electronics in the camera have their constraints, and the optical path can get in the way, too: especially with lower-grade lens, extreme highlights tend to produce blooming and chromatic aberrations (color fringing) that can't be fixed with a single click. Further, the latitude of possible adjustments is much lower when working with JPEG files; going beyond +/- 25% would be pushing your luck. Selective color and tone tweaks In addition to the whole-picture techniques discussed in the two preceding sections, most photo editing programs offer a handful of targeted tone adjustment tools. Chief among them are: * Separate luminance adjustments for shadows and highlights. In most programs, this is a standalone feature; in Capture One, it's a part of a confusingly-named "High Dynamic Range" tool. The tool helps restore details in overexposed or underexposed areas without affecting the rest of the image. For example, in the Hoover Dam photo, I used it to bring out the texture of the clouds. * Three-way hue and saturation adjustments for luminance ranges (shadows, midtones, highlights). Most programs refer to this as "color balance". The tool helps correct background color casts when mixing incompatible sources of light. It's also useful for adding distinctive tints to backgrounds, provided that the background is darker or lighter than the main subject of your shot. * Hue, saturation, and luminance adjustment for a specific source color (common preprogrammed choices: red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue, violet, magenta). Also known as the HSL tool, the mechanism is invaluable for making the vegetation greener or the sky more blue; or for selectively correcting skin tones, which tend to be clustered in the red-orange-yellow zone. Here's a practical example of using these tools to make subtle stylistic tweaks to a photograph and give it a distinctive look: [120-origin] Of course, the adjustments can be bolder. The following sequence of edits to a casual photo of my wife demonstrates some of the possibilities: [90n-superh] The first variant uses the low-key orange-teal color scheme all-too-common in superhero action films; the second one employs a sickly, low-contrast greenish cast seen in HBO's "Chernobyl"; and the final one is a dark, blue-shifted version that, despite ample illumination, emulates a photo taken at night. Of course, some photos may require corrections to regions that can't be isolated based on their color or luminance. In such a case, the photographer may need to resort to manual retouching, either creating a mask layer or freestyling with a "dodge" or "burn" tool or a color brush. Some emerging photo editors, such as Luminar Neo, employ machine learning to infer the 3D structure of the scene, offering the ability to apply sophisticated lighting effects ("relighting") without fiddling with a brush. The algorithms are slow and clunky, but every now and then, they can save a botched shot. Part IV: Framing Along with color theory, the principles of photographic composition are the refuge of armchair philosophers who pen stuffy essays about concepts such as "the golden ratio" or "the rule of thirds". Naturally, aesthetics are to some extent a social construct: your audience might expect photographs to look in a particular way simply because that's what they're accustomed to. It follows that one shouldn't be a habitual contrarian; but it's about as counterproductive to get too hung up on dogma. With this in mind, in the final chapter of this guide, let's have a quick look at several important composition choices - and let's do it without getting bogged down with ideology. Clutter By far the most serious and preventable error in composition is background clutter. It's not that backgrounds need to be tidy: in street photography, busy cityscapes are a part of the picture as much as the subject standing in front. But when clutter is poorly controlled, it distracts from what the photographer is trying to say. The distractions can come in many forms: busy textures, clashing colors, intrusive shadows or highlights, awkwardly cropped detail, or elements that simply do not belong - say, a toddler throwing a tantrum in the background of a glamour shot. In the following photograph of a camping knife, survivalist-themed background items make the picture more interesting; removing the props and exposing a messy kitchen countertop ruins the shot: [130nn-clut] Of course, are times when we want the background to simply disappear. We showcased three ways of doing this earlier in the guide: area lighting, wide apertures, and long focal lengths. Placing the subject within the frame Most novice photographers tend to place their subject smack dab in the middle, facing the camera, and filling most of the frame. There is nothing wrong with this approach, especially in portrait work - but it tends to create a static and clinical look. When the setting permits it, a wider crop can easily liven up the photograph: [140-crop-t] More dynamism can be added by moving the subject to the left or to the right; this works equally well in landscapes and in portrait work. The resulting negative space provides interesting contrast. If the model's gaze or head is turned in that direction, the photograph has a more balanced appearance and will usually convey a playful or contemplative mood. If all the action is concentrated on a single side of the photograph, the effect is more unsettling, creating a sense of a disturbance happening just outside the frame: [142-balanc] Titling the camera is another underused trick. It usually doesn't help much in portrait work, as it distorts body proportions and just looks odd; but in landscapes, it is a godsend. In the plains, tilting the camera up lets you to capture more of the sky and less distracting details right next to the photographer. In mountainous terrains or next to large bodies of water, doing the opposite helps capture more architectural detail or more reflections of the sky. For portraits, it's also good to pay attention to model's posture; the pictures tend to be far more flattering if the model stands up straight and raises their chin up a bit. Epilogue The approaches and tools described in this document are by no means exhaustive. There are many other photographic techniques worth learning; for example, there are several methods for conveying motion - timelapses, multiple exposures, and selective blur effects created by panning the camera in tandem with the movement of the subject of the shot. Or, there are multiple optical and postprocessing-based methods for correcting or exaggerating perspective, or for achieving a variety of non-photorealistic looks. My goal wasn't to create a comprehensive list of every little trick in the book. Instead, I wanted to help the readers discover the joy of photographic experimentation, no matter whether they're carrying a smartphone or a $5,000 professional photo rig. Unlike some other authors, I also wanted to do this without bragging about my own best shots: the examples employed on this page were all shot in the backyard or around the home with minimal prep. If you are interested in learning from others, I recommend joining a photo community, although I would avoid sites such as Instagram or Flickr. They are centered around view counts, "like" counts, and algorithmic feeds, leading to extreme homogenization of content and toxic community dynamics. My favorite site right now is Glass. They charge a modest fee ($30/year), but have a friendly community and give every photographer an equal chance of getting noticed without making it feel that you're participating in a zero-sum game. You can contact me at lcamtuf@coredump.cx, follow me on Twitter, or subscribe on Substack. For other features, check out my homepage. Your lucky number is: 21746707