From the Preface

Photography is a wonderful thing.

From a purely practical point, it allows us to capture the world around us so that we may recall that moment at a later time. But describing it that way is so clinical… it takes all the soul out of photography, and of course soul is what makes an image special.

Looking at it from an emotional, soulful point of view, photography is all about you. It shows the viewer (even if the only viewer to ever see the image is you yourself) what you were seeing, experiencing, possibly even feeling and thinking at the time the image was made.

And that's powerful stuff! It allows us to look back at places we've visited, people we've met, foods we've eaten… to recall unrepeatable moments in time (your baby's first steps… your first dinner in Paris… the first day with your new car) and see it all again as clearly as the day we were there. At least, that's the hope, right?

But what happens when the picture isn't so good? It's out of focus, or crooked, or poorly lit, or even missed entirely. Well that's no good, is it?

Look, we don't spend our life being followed around by perfect Rembrandt lighting, nor always have our best clothes or even best smile on, and we certainly aren't always fast enough to capture the perfect moment on camera. We don't live in the amazing world and perfect lives that our Facebook timelines profess it to be. But the more we know about the art and technicality of photography, the better prepared we can be, the more likely it is that we'll walk away with a captured memory that we'll actually enjoy looking at years from now.

Isn't that a pretty good goal? To maybe not always capture the perfect image, but certainly to capture the best one possible? To eliminate those horribly backlit photos because we forgot to say “turn this way”, to skip taking the photo where nothing you want is in focus, to never again share a blown out, awful flash photo, because it's the only one we have?

That's the goal of this modest book. To help anyone reading it to create better photos. Whether you're using a smartphone, a point-and-shoot, a mirrorless camera or a dSLR, good photography can be easy.

There's no excuse for bad photography.