• it's a **vocabulary to talk about pictures**, not a creativity recipe — take pictures and **critique your own**

• the throughline: **layering & separation** — make the subject stand out from its surroundings

• 💡 **Big lesson:** separate the subject from its surroundings, and commit — every rule below is one tactic for layering/separation; whatever you do (off-center, blur, tilt, saturate), do it boldly or not at all (the timid half-measure is the amateur's tell)

#### Composition

• **control the background** (the #1 fix): move your feet, shallow depth of field, telephoto compression, crop / get close, clean up (clone / Poisson), desaturate / darken, or go black & white

• **simplify — get close**: "if you can't make it good, make it tight"

• **off-center the subject** (rule of thirds); leave room ahead of motion or gaze — or deliberately **center** for symmetry

• **negative space**: give the subject room to breathe

• **pick the viewpoint** ("move your feet"): get **low** or to **eye level** (people, animals), occasionally high — the angle beats the zoom

• **horizontal vs vertical**: match the frame orientation to the subject

• **mind the geometry**: keep verticals straight, avoid near-parallels and accidental alignments (correct perspective with a homography later), build on diagonals, try an unusual angle

• **sweep the frame edges** before you shoot — catch distractions and anything half-cut by the border

• **foreground helps** (landscapes): a near element adds depth

#### Light

• **it's the light that counts**: soft, directional light flatters; harsh midday sun rarely does

• **open shade / overcast** = soft, even light — often the easiest good light

• **golden hour** (sunrise / sunset) for warm, low, directional light; **blue hour** just after sunset

• **fill the shadows**: fill flash, **bounce** flash (off a wall or ceiling, ~45°), a diffuser, or a reflector — never bare flash head-on

• the deeper idea: most lighting rules are about **managing dynamic range** (soft light / fill / reflectors compress contrast); studio three-point lighting; HDR + tone mapping in post

#### Portraits

• it's **all about the eyes** (focus there, catchlight); shoot near **eye level**; a short **telephoto** (~85–135 mm) flatters faces; light the face softly, warm WB a touch; basic **lighting & makeup** shape a face with light and shadow; over-shoot

#### Then, lightly, in post

• (→ ISP / Color / HDR): shoot **RAW**, set **white balance**, fix exposure, **manage contrast** with a tone curve, dodge / burn, crop; boost saturation/vibrance a touch; HDR + tone-mapping for high-contrast scenes

• governing principle: **whatever you do, do it less** — restraint is the mark of the finished image

• a quick field guide — per genre, the lens, the exposure priorities, and the one thing that matters most:

• **portrait**: short telephoto (85–135 mm), wide aperture for shallow depth of field + subject isolation, focus on the near **eye**, soft directional light, slightly warm white balance

• **landscape**: wide lens, small aperture (f/8–f/16) for deep depth of field, low ISO + tripod, focus near hyperfocal, a foreground element for depth, golden / blue hour; bracket for HDR

• **wildlife**: long telephoto (300–600 mm), fast shutter to freeze motion, continuous autofocus + burst, high ISO as needed, get to eye level, patience

• **studio**: controlled strobes (key / fill / rim), low ISO, aperture for depth of field, mind flash sync speed, shape the light (softbox / reflector), often tethered

• **sports / action**: fast shutter (1/1000 s+), continuous autofocus tracking + high frame rate, wide aperture / high ISO; pan to blur the background while keeping the subject sharp

• **architecture / real estate**: wide or **tilt-shift** lens to keep verticals straight (or correct perspective later with a homography), small aperture, level the camera, bracket interiors for the window-vs-room dynamic range

• **macro**: high magnification — its own section below

• **macro** = photographing small subjects at high magnification (life-size **1:1**, or greater)

• **the central problem is depth of field**: at 1:1 the in-focus band is millimetres even stopped down, so —

• stop down (f/8–f/16+), but watch **diffraction** softening at very small apertures (a real ceiling at high magnification)

• **focus stacking**: shoot a stack at stepped focus and combine the sharp slices (→ Multiple-exposure / focus stacks)

• small sensors get macro depth of field almost for free (sensor-size scaling of DoF — see Image formation)

• **working distance vs magnification**: a longer macro focal length buys more **working distance** at the *same* magnification (so you can light the subject) without changing the depth-of-field band — same magnification ⇒ same DoF (Image formation)

• **gear**: a true macro lens, extension tubes, a reversed lens, or close-up diopters; a **focusing rail** for precise steps

• **light**: the subject is so close the lens shadows it — **ring flash / twin flash**, diffusers; tripod for static subjects

• **macro 3D**: **hypostereo** (closely spaced lenses, tiny baseline) for natural-looking depth on very near subjects (cross-ref stereo)

• **light painting**: a long exposure in the dark while moving a light (or the camera) — the sensor accumulates the trail (→ exposure / long exposure)

• **multi-Fredo / clone shots**: a locked-off camera + several frames of the same person in different spots, composited — one subject, many times

• **box rigs & multi-camera**: bullet-time / array rigs and beam-splitters — capturing one moment from many viewpoints or instants

• others: tilt-shift / miniature faking, intentional camera movement, prism / kaleidoscope, infrared & UV

sprinkle throughout books

• Hockney

• Jason salavon

• face detector, clouds

• Bill time action visualization

• weird non-linear perspective, push broom.

• multiperspective panos

• text output camera

• blind camera

• anticliche camera

• how the **visual system shapes how we make and read images** (Aaron Hertzmann's "why does art look the way it does"; Livingstone's *Vision and Art*):

• **luminance vs color**: the luminance channel carries form, depth and motion; equiluminant (color-only) art looks unstable / shimmery (Impressionism, Op-art) — ties to the chroma CSF (Spatial vision)

• **central vs peripheral vision**: low peripheral acuity explains the **Mona Lisa's elusive smile** and why a loose sketch reads from across the room

• **shortcuts that match perception**: edges / line drawings (we encode edges), exaggerated contrast (lateral inhibition), chiaroscuro & cast shadows for depth, atmospheric perspective (scattering)

• **the camera vs the eye**: a photo flattens what the eye explores over time (no foveation, one exposure / one focus) — part of why "the photo doesn't look like I remember it"

• forward tie-ins: NPR / stylization (Advanced); aesthetics & saliency models (ML)