Chapter 37 — Exercises

The eye is trained by reps, not by reading, and most of these exercises ask you to see — often with no camera at all, which is exactly where the fastest growth lives. A phone is a perfect tool here; so are your own two hands made into a frame. Difficulty is marked ⭐ (warm-up), ⭐⭐ (core), ⭐⭐⭐ (stretch). Do the starred and odd-numbered ones at minimum; model answers and critiques for those live in the book's Answers to Selected Exercises. Keep everything you make — one of these frames is your Portfolio Checkpoint.

A reminder on the recurring locations you'll be sent to: the kitchen window (soft, controllable light), the busy intersection or market (street, motion, the moment), the park or trail at the edge of town (landscape, nature, golden hour), and the city block at night (long exposure, neon). Find your own version of each within walking distance; you never need to travel to do this book.

Part A — Looking vs. seeing (Eye Training, no camera)

These are the foundation. They cost nothing, need no camera, and train the single upstream skill — the eye — in isolation. If you do only one part of this chapter, do this one, and do it daily. The aim is to make Mode B (active seeing) switch on at will, and eventually by itself.

Exercise 37.1 ⭐ — Sixty seconds of Mode B. Look up from wherever you are and spend one focused minute in seeing mode (Mode B, §37.1). Without touching a camera, answer aloud: where is the light coming from (point at it)? Hard or soft? What is the strongest line in the space and where does it lead the eye? If you made one photograph here, what would it be about, and where would the edges fall? Write your four answers in a sentence each. Repeat this drill three times today in three different places.

Exercise 37.2 ⭐ — The wordless walk. Take a fifteen-minute walk in one of your four locations with your camera left at home. Find and mentally frame ten complete photographs, counting on your fingers; for each, name the light and what the picture is about. Photograph nothing. At home, write the three strongest from memory as Described Photographs (six fields). Note which sub-skill — light, moment, or structure — carried each one.

Exercise 37.3 ⭐⭐ — The hand-frame audit. For one day, whenever you catch yourself looking at something interesting, raise the hand-rectangle (§37.2 Gear Note) and frame it before deciding whether it's a photograph. Do this at least fifteen times. Keep a tally of how many framed scenes turned out to be worth keeping versus how many fell apart once you put edges on them. What does the ratio teach you about the difference between an interesting thing and an interesting frame?

Exercise 37.4 ⭐⭐⭐ — Reverse-engineer five lights. Find five photographs (yours, a book's, a feed's) and, from the shadows and highlights alone, deduce for each: where was the light, was it hard or soft, what colour, how many sources. Write your reasoning, not just your verdict. This is the §37.4 study discipline applied to light specifically, and it is the single most professional seeing skill in the book.

Part B — The mature Light Log (Eye Training & Shoot This)

The Light Log you began in Chapter 5 grows up here. The four disciplines — the light entry, the found-frame, the why-question, and the prediction — are deliberate practice for the eye, and the prediction discipline in particular will do more for your composition in a month than a year of casual shooting. Keep the log; you will mine it for your Portfolio Checkpoint.

Exercise 37.5 ⭐ — One week, four disciplines. Run the mature Light Log (§37.2) for seven consecutive days. Each day, do at least one of the four disciplines — the light entry, the found-frame, the why-question, the prediction — and label which. Keep the log. At week's end, count: which discipline did you reach for most, and which did you avoid? The one you avoided is probably your weakest sub-skill and your best place to grow.

Exercise 37.6 ⭐⭐ — Predict, then check. For one shooting session (twenty frames), before you look at the back of the camera predict out loud where the viewer's eye will go first and where it will travel. Then check against the actual image. Log the gap each time. After twenty frames, describe the pattern in your prediction errors — do you consistently over- or under-estimate the pull of brightness, of faces, of colour?

Exercise 37.7 ⭐⭐ — The found-frame, then taken. On your commute or in a waiting room, find one complete photograph in the six fields in your head before raising anything. Then, if you can, actually make it (phone is ideal). Compare what you imagined to what you captured. Where did reality differ from your mental frame, and what does that tell you about a gap in your seeing?

Exercise 37.8 ⭐⭐⭐ — Deliberate-practice ledger. For one week, before each shooting session, write down the one named sub-skill you will practice (e.g. "only backlight," "only anticipating gesture," "only leading lines"). Shoot only toward it. Afterward, grade yourself honestly against that single goal — ignore every other quality of the frames. At week's end, reflect: did naming one edge each day change how much you improved compared to your usual "take good photos" sessions?

Part C — Constraints as creativity (Shoot This)

Each of these imposes a single limit for a fixed time. Pick one and commit — the specific constraint matters less than the commitment. The discomfort around day three or four is not a sign the exercise is failing; it is the exercise working, forcing your eye past the obvious into the pictures underneath. Do not let yourself off early.

Exercise 37.9 ⭐⭐ — One subject, one week. Choose a single humble subject within reach (a mug, a chair, a doorway, your hands, a plant) and photograph only that, once a day, for seven days. Each day must yield a genuinely different photograph — new light, new vantage, new detail, new moment. Lay all seven side by side. Mark the day you broke through from the obvious into the surprising. Keep the two strongest.

Exercise 37.10 ⭐⭐ — One focal length, one week. Lock one focal length (a single prime lens, or on a phone the main 1× camera with no zooming) for a week. To change your framing you must move your feet. At week's end, write what the constraint forced you to do that a zoom would have let you avoid. Did your vantages get more interesting?

Exercise 37.11 ⭐⭐ — One colour. For three days, photograph only scenes built around a single colour you choose. You are training colour seeing (Chapter 7) by starvation. How did committing to one colour change what you noticed walking around?

Exercise 37.12 ⭐⭐⭐ — The thirty-six-frame roll. Allow yourself exactly thirty-six frames for one full day (the length of an old film roll) — once they're gone, you're done shooting. No deleting to "earn back" frames. Describe how scarcity changed your seeing. Did you look harder before pressing the shutter? Choose your single best frame and defend it against the other thirty-five.

Exercise 37.13 ⭐⭐⭐ — The anchor, re-seen. Return to your "red door" — the recurring single-strong-colour, textured subject you found back in Chapter 1 — and re-photograph it with everything you now know about light, composition, and seeing. Place the new frame beside your earliest attempt. Write what changed: not in the door (it didn't), but in you.

Part D — Studying images & stealing like an artist (Read the Frame & Recreate It)

Your eye is shaped by what you look at and, crucially, how deeply. These exercises replace scrolling with studying, and turn admiration into learning by forcing you to name the one transferable move you can steal. Throughout, hold the flattered-not-robbed test: take the principle, never the picture.

Exercise 37.14 ⭐⭐ — Five minutes, one photograph. Choose one genuinely strong photograph from a book, monograph, or museum (not a feed). Spend a full, undistracted five minutes with it, working the six study questions from §37.4 in order. Write your answers. End by naming the one move you can steal. Then go try that move this week.

Exercise 37.15 ⭐⭐ — Read this frame: the rain glass. Re-read Figure 37.5 (the Saul Leiter homage). In your own words, name (a) where the eye lands first and why, (b) the single technical choice most responsible for the image's mood, and (c) one principle you could steal from it without copying the picture. Be specific about how you'd apply the principle to your own street.

Exercise 37.16 ⭐⭐ — Steal a move, make it yours. Pick one photographer whose work you admire and identify a single transferable principle in how they see (a way with backlight, a use of negative space, a kind of moment). Make three photographs of your own subjects applying that principle. Caption each with the principle and how you transformed it. Apply the flattered-not-robbed test: would your influence feel flattered or robbed?

Exercise 37.17 ⭐⭐⭐ — Visual-diet audit. For one week, log every way you consumed photographs: scrolling, saving, books, exhibitions, monographs. Estimate the time in each mode and how deeply you looked. At week's end, calculate your ratio of skimming to studying. Then redesign your visual diet for the following week — less feed, more slow looking — and report what changed in your own seeing and your mood.

Exercise 37.18 ⭐⭐⭐ — Write a study you could teach from. Take any famous image you can find and write a one-page study of it deep enough that a beginner could learn one real lesson from your writing alone — without seeing the photograph. This forces you to see it fully and to practice the Described-Photograph / alt-text skill. (This is exactly how case-study-01 is built.)

Part E — Beating the rut and the comparison trap (Fix the Photo & Reflection)

Every photographer who keeps going hits ruts and the comparison trap; the skill is not avoiding them but recognizing and treating them. These exercises are diagnostic and prescriptive — you name the specific cause and apply the specific cure, rather than waiting to feel inspired.

Exercise 37.19 ⭐⭐ — Diagnose the rut. Honestly assess your recent work. If you're in a rut, diagnose its specific cause using §37.5's list (stale practice / stale diet / same look / empty / paralyzed by comparison). If you're not in a rut right now, diagnose a past one. Name the cause precisely, then prescribe the matching cure and commit to doing it this week.

Exercise 37.20 ⭐⭐ — The bad-photo permission slip. Go to your busy intersection or market and deliberately make thirty bad photographs — cluttered, mis-timed, badly framed — without any self-judgment, for twenty minutes. The only rule is to keep shooting. Afterward, find the three frames that turned out unexpectedly good. Write what lowering the stakes freed you to see. Keep them.

Exercise 37.21 ⭐⭐ — The fair comparison. Lay this month's strongest five frames beside your 00-before baseline from Chapter 1 (and, if you have it, work from a year ago). Write three specific things that have measurably improved — in your seeing, not your gear. This is the only honest comparison; practice making it instead of the feed comparison.

Exercise 37.22 ⭐⭐⭐ — Fix the stalled photographer. Read this described situation and prescribe a recovery plan: "A photographer shoots the same park, at the same midday hour, from standing eye-level, every weekend. The frames are competent and identical. They scroll other photographers' feeds nightly and feel worse each time. They're considering buying a new camera to 'get inspired again.'" Using §37.5, diagnose every problem you can see and prescribe the specific, gear-free fixes — in order of priority. Explain why the new camera would not help.

Exercise 37.23 ⭐⭐⭐ — One week off the feed. For seven days, do not scroll any photo feed. Replace that time with one of: a monograph, a museum visit, slow study of single images, or simply shooting. At week's end, write honestly how it affected (a) your seeing, (b) your output, and (c) how you felt about your own work. Decide what your permanent feed policy will be.

Exercise 37.24 ⭐⭐ — Shoot something badly, on purpose. For one afternoon, give yourself explicit permission to make terrible photographs — no standard, no judgment, pure play. The point is to remove the pressure to be good, which is often the exact thing that froze your seeing. Afterward, note which "bad" frames surprised you and what relaxing the stakes let you notice. (This is the rut-breaker from §37.5; it works because inspiration follows action, not the reverse.)

Part F — Seeing as a way of life & the Portfolio (Reflection)

The eye, once trained, does not switch off — these final exercises move seeing off the camera and into the rest of your life, and then gather the proof into your Portfolio. The Portfolio Checkpoint (37.27) is the required deliverable.

Exercise 37.25 ⭐ — Caught by the light. For one ordinary day, simply notice — and jot down — every time light stops you involuntarily: a stairwell, a face in a window, a shadow across a wall. Don't photograph; just count and note. At day's end, how many times did the trained Mode B switch itself on without your asking? That count is a measure of how far your eye has come.

Exercise 37.26 ⭐⭐ — A day of seeing, no agenda. Carry your camera or phone through a normal day with no plan and no assignment, Mode B on. Make a photograph only when the world genuinely arranges itself into one. At day's end, look at what you made and mark how many frames the untrained version of you would have walked right past. Those are your proof.

Exercise 37.27 ⭐⭐ — Portfolio Checkpoint: the frame your old eye would have missed. Complete the chapter's Portfolio Checkpoint. From a week of running the mature Light Log, choose one image you saw because you've trained your eye — a frame the old you would have missed. Add it to your Portfolio. Write one sentence on exactly why the old eye would have missed it (the light you now notice? the moment you now anticipate? the frame you now feel?). Place it beside your 00-before baseline.

Exercise 37.28 ⭐⭐⭐ — Teach someone to see. Take a willing beginner (a friend, a family member, or a camera pointed at yourself) on a ten-minute walk and teach them to see one photograph: name the light, find the frame, wait for the moment. Notice how teaching re-activates and sharpens your own seeing. Write what you learned about your own eye by trying to explain it.

Part G — Settings Drill (executing what the eye decides)

Seeing is upstream of settings, but settings are how you execute the decision the eye made (Chapter 1's fourth theme: the technical and the creative are inseparable). For each scenario, write the exposure — mode, aperture, shutter, ISO, focus, metering, white balance — and, in one line, the trade-off you chose and why. There's no single right answer; defend yours.

Exercise 37.29 ⭐⭐ — The window keeper. You've seen it: a glass of water on the sill, low morning side-light passing through it, the dim room behind. You want the glass luminous and the room dissolved to soft dark, with one sharp specular highlight. Write the settings and name the single most important exposure decision (hint: where do you meter, and which way do you push exposure compensation?).

Exercise 37.30 ⭐⭐ — The unguarded street moment. You've trained your eye to anticipate a gesture: a figure is about to step into a bar of light at a busy intersection, and you have perhaps half a second. You want them sharp, the moment frozen, working from where you stand (no time to move). Write the settings that make you ready before the moment arrives, and explain why pre-setting beats reacting.

Exercise 37.31 ⭐⭐⭐ — The light on the wall. You've pivoted from object to light (the §37.3 Phase 2 move): hard-edged bars of warm dawn light crawling across a plain wall, no subject. You want the gold rich, the shadows truly black, the bars crisp. Write the settings and justify why you'd deliberately underexpose — and what you'd lose if you let the camera meter it "correctly."

Part H — Interleaved (mixing prior chapters)

The eye integrates everything; these problems force you to combine this chapter's seeing with skills from earlier in the book. Interleaving — practicing mixed skills rather than one in isolation — is itself a form of deliberate practice that builds durable, transferable seeing.

Exercise 37.32 ⭐⭐ — Light Log meets critique. Take one image from a week of your matured Light Log practice and run Chapter 31's full four-stage critique on it — description, analysis, interpretation, judgment — in writing. Then state which §37.2 discipline (light entry, found-frame, why-question, prediction) most helped you see it in the first place. Connect the seeing to the critiquing.

Exercise 37.33 ⭐⭐ — Constraint meets composition. Run a one-hour, ten-frame constraint shoot (§37.3) on a single subject, but with one added rule: every frame must use a specific Chapter 6 tool you choose in advance — only leading lines, or only the rule of thirds, or only negative space. Two constraints at once. Afterward, write whether stacking the limits deepened the work or strangled it, and why.

Exercise 37.34 ⭐⭐⭐ — The re-seen anchor, fully analyzed. Re-photograph your "red door" (or your chosen recurring subject) one last time with everything you now know, then write a full Described Photograph of your result in the six fields and a paragraph comparing it to your Chapter 1 attempt — naming what changed in your seeing of light (Ch.5), composition (Ch.6), and moment (Ch.10). This single exercise interleaves the whole book through one unchanging door.

Stretch challenge

Exercise 37.35 ⭐⭐⭐ — The thirty-day eye. For thirty days, do one Light Log discipline and make (or mentally frame) at least one deliberate photograph every single day, all on the camera you already own, working at a named edge. Pick one overarching constraint for the whole month (one subject, one focal length, one light, or one colour). On day 30, lay out the strongest image from each week — four images — beside your earliest. You will see, in your own work, the chapter's entire thesis proven: the eye is a muscle, and thirty days of reps visibly changed it. Name which week's image is strongest and why, and what the month taught you that no purchase ever could.

Model answers and critiques for the starred and odd-numbered exercises appear in the book's "Answers to Selected Exercises." Try each — most of them with no camera, many with your eyes alone — before reading them. In this chapter especially, the attempt is the entire lesson: you cannot read your way to an eye.