ABSTRACT
Place a camera in the hands of a chimpanzee at the zoo, and in a short time the chimp will prove that taking pictures is easy. On the other hand, making photographscreating images from light as practiced by the best photographers-is a complex and deliberate process. Unlike taking pictures, making photographs entails not only pointing the camera at something and releasing the shutter, but consciously regarding the ways in which photography’s technical elements relate to the subject at hand. e technical elements of photography-the photographic frame and its borders; the quality of focus as determined by the aperture or lens; shutter speeds and their eff ects in relation to time and motion; and the physical media used to create the aggregate image-constitute the grammatical basis of photographic language. As such, they impose both visual qualities and aesthetic meanings upon the images they create.
