Chapter 1 — Exercises

Photography is learned with a camera in your hands, so most of these exercises send you out to shoot or ask you to look hard at images. There is no wrong camera here — a phone is ideal. Difficulty is marked ⭐ (warm-up), ⭐⭐ (core), ⭐⭐⭐ (stretch). Do the starred and odd-numbered ones at minimum; model answers and critiques for those are in the book's Answers to Selected Exercises. Keep everything you shoot — some of it feeds your Portfolio later.

Part A — Seeing the four decisions (Read the Frame)

Exercise 1.1 ⭐ — Name the four decisions. Find five photographs around you (on walls, packaging, your phone's camera roll, a magazine). For each, write one sentence naming all four decisions: the light (direction and quality), the moment, the frame (what's included/excluded), and the focus (what's sharp). The goal is fluency, not depth.

Exercise 1.2 ⭐⭐ — The strongest decision. For three photographs you genuinely admire, identify which one of the four decisions is doing the most work — the thing that, if you changed it, would collapse the image. Write a sentence defending your choice.

Exercise 1.3 ⭐⭐ — Write a Described Photograph. Choose one photograph you love and write a full Described Photograph of it using the book's six fields (THE FRAME / THE LIGHT / THE MOMENT / THE CHOICES / THE EFFECT / THE LESSON). Be specific enough that a reader could picture it without seeing it. This is the single best exercise for training your eye; do it often.

Exercise 1.4 ⭐⭐⭐ — Diagnose a weak photo. Find one of your own photographs that disappoints you. Using the four decisions, diagnose exactly why it fails (almost always: the light was poor, or the frame included too much). Then write the specific re-shoot that would fix it. You are not allowed to blame the camera.

Part B — Writing with light (Shoot This)

Exercise 1.5 ⭐ — Same object, two lights. Photograph one ordinary object twice: once in whatever light it's already in, then again in the best light you can find (a window is ideal), turned so the light rakes across it from the side. Same object, same camera, two minutes apart. The only variable is your decision about light. Compare them.

Exercise 1.6 ⭐⭐ — Find the light, not the subject. Spend fifteen minutes walking with your camera looking only for interesting light — not interesting subjects. When you find good light (a shaft through a doorway, soft glow on a wall), find something to put in it. Make three photographs. Notice how the search changes when light, not subject, leads.

Exercise 1.7 ⭐⭐ — The deliberate photograph. Repeat §1.6's in-chapter exercise formally: make one photograph in which you consciously decide all four decisions out loud before pressing the shutter, then make it twice more, changing one decision each time. Keep all three and note what changed.

Exercise 1.8 ⭐⭐⭐ — Forty-five minutes, one subject. Pick a single humble object (the egg from the chapter's vignette, a piece of fruit, a glass of water) and photograph only that for forty-five minutes, changing light, frame, and moment. Make at least thirty frames. Choose your best one and write why it beats the other twenty-nine. This teaches more than a new lens ever could.

Part C — Seeing light (Eye Training & the Light Log)

Exercise 1.9 ⭐ — Start the Light Log. Begin the Light Log described in §1.4. Make your first entry today: two or three sentences about some light you noticed and what it was doing (direction, quality, color). No camera required.

Exercise 1.10 ⭐⭐ — A day of light. For one full day, photograph the same spot in your home — a corner, a tabletop, a doorway — at four different times: early morning, midday, late afternoon, and after dark with the lights on. Same frame each time. Compare how completely the light transforms an unchanging scene. This is the chapter's thesis made visible.

Exercise 1.11 ⭐⭐ — Hard vs. soft hunt. Find and photograph one example of clearly hard light (sharp-edged shadows) and one example of clearly soft light (gentle, gradual shadows). Caption each with where the light was coming from and why it was hard or soft.

Exercise 1.12 ⭐⭐⭐ — Reverse-engineer the light. Find three photographs (yours or others') and, for each, deduce from the shadows and highlights alone: where was the light, was it hard or soft, what color was it, and how many sources were there? Write your reasoning. You are learning to read light backward from its effects — a core professional skill.

Part D — Recreate It

Exercise 1.13 ⭐⭐ — Recreate the red door. Find your own "red door" — any ordinary subject with texture and a single strong color, lit by raking side light at a low sun angle (late afternoon is easiest). Recreate Figure 1.2's approach: shoot it straight-on, frame to let a plain background set off the color, and let the raking light reveal texture. Keep it; you'll revisit this same subject idea throughout the book.

Exercise 1.14 ⭐⭐⭐ — The window-light still life. Recreate the spirit of the chapter's "glowing egg": one simple object beside a window, turned until soft light models its form, framed against the darker side of the room so it glows against shadow. The challenge is restraint — one object, one light, nothing else.

Part E — Reflection and Portfolio

Exercise 1.15 ⭐ — Set up the Portfolio. Create your Photography Portfolio folder and its running list, exactly as the Portfolio Checkpoint describes. Add your 00-before baseline image. Write one sentence on why you chose it.

Exercise 1.16 ⭐⭐ — Your photographic "why." In a short paragraph, write why you want to make better photographs. What do you want your images to do — remember, share, persuade, express, earn? There is no wrong answer, but naming it now will shape every choice ahead. Revisit it at Chapter 39.

Exercise 1.17 ⭐⭐ — The gear-honesty audit. List every photograph you have wished you could make but believed you needed different gear for. For each, ask honestly: is this truly a gear limitation, or a seeing-and-deciding limitation? Be ruthless. Most items on most lists are the latter.

Exercise 1.18 ⭐⭐⭐ — Teach it. Explain to someone (a friend, a journal, a camera pointed at yourself) what "writing with light" means and why a camera matters less than people think, using one of your own two-light photos from Exercise 1.5 as evidence. Teaching forces clarity; if you can teach it, you understand it.

Stretch challenge

Exercise 1.19 ⭐⭐⭐ — One week, no new gear, one new habit. For seven days: make one Light Log entry and one deliberate photograph each day, all on the same camera you own today. At week's end, lay the seven images out together. You will almost certainly see improvement across just seven days — proof, in your own work, of the chapter's central claim. Note which day's image is strongest and why.

Model answers and critiques for the starred and odd-numbered exercises appear in the book's "Answers to Selected Exercises." Try each with a camera before reading them — in photography, the attempt is the lesson.