How to Take Good Photographs

    First off, let me state that I'm not claiming to be an expert photographer.  I don't consider myself to be anywhere close to that title and probably won't for a long time.  There is just so much more to learn about.
    However, I think I have the basics of photography down from a technical standpoint and that's what I want to write about today.  A few days ago, one of my friends from high school asked me what he should do in order to learn how to take good photographs.  Here is an reiteration of my message to him:

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    The primary way I learned some photography basics was by reading as much as I could about the topic and looking at examples of good work. In my opinion, the most important topic to read up on is how film speeds, shutter speeds, and lens apertures all interact with each other. Knowing how the three of these interact with each other will help you better operate a camera to achieve the effects that you want. A great site for learning this information (as well as many other great techniques) is:

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech.htm
(Check out the article "Basics of Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO 21 April 2004" for simple explanations of what I mentioned above).

After becoming aware of the relationship between shutter speeds, aperture, and film speeds, take some photos using your cameras manual mode. At first, it will probably be difficult to guess what settings to use in order to get decent photos.Most likely, your first shots will be coming out over and under exposed (but this isn't a huge deal in today's age of digital cameras where taking photos is essentially free...so wasted photos cost nothing!)  In order to help you start off with guessing lighting conditions and camera settings, try using the Sunny 16 rule:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunny_16_rule

(Sidenote: When I was first learning this stuff I used a medium-format film camera. One huge benefit of using film when learning to take photos is that it's costly. Therefore, in order to reduce the amount of money I was spending on film and processing, I made sure I thought out and checked my settings for every shot before taking it. This made sure that on a roll of 12 frames, each shot I got was technically perfect and properly composed.

Although you will most likely be using a digital camera, you can use this same principle in taking your photos. Once you start becoming good at choosing camera settings for given lighting conditions, maybe limit yourself to only taking one shot of a given subject, making sure you have set up everything properly so that you will be guaranteed a technically superb image. Doing this will help you pay more attention to detail as well as help you become an expert at using your camera)

Finally, the last major thing that I have done is to look at good photographic work. I visit a lot of websites on a near daily basis to look at new photos, which end up giving me new ideas about how I might want to shoot something in the future. Some sites that I enjoy:

Regularly updated:
http://www.istoica.com/everyday/
http://www.chromasia.com/iblog/;
http://strobist.blogspot.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rebba
http://andrewhefter.com/index.php
http://wvs.topleftpixel.com/

Two of my favorite pros:
http://chasejarvis.com/
http://www.platonphoto.com/

I also highly recommend finding some groups that interest you on http://flickr.com/ . You don't necessarily need to post photos in the groups or look at them everyday, but loosely following some groups that you enjoy shooting will help you generate ideas and show you what works and what doesn't.
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    I hope that my friend found this information useful, and now maybe some other aspiring photographers will too!