If I describe a friend as being highly literate, what would that mean to you? Does it mean that they know how to read? Or does it mean they are widely read across multiple genres of literature? Or does it mean they know a particular kind of literature with incredible depth. So what does it mean to be photographically literate?

I received an email asking about submitting images to us for publication. We ask for images that are not less than 3400 pixels on the long side. The author wanted to know how many DPI the images should be. I'm asked this question from time to time and it always exhibits certain confusion about the relationship between pixel dimensions and DPI. I'll try to clarify it in this commentary.

I know ever so many photographers who say they picked up the camera because they can't draw decent stick figures. I'm not sure that's true. How would our inability to draw improve if we put as much effort into it as we do photography? Furthermore, is the craft of any medium the central core of being an artist?

This topic is one that was suggested by a listener. I was fascinated by the question. Try as I might, I couldn't come up with a single part of the process in which I find no joy of one kind or another. I even enjoy throwing the crappy prints into the trash. On second thought, there is one aspect I'm not fond of at all.

"It's a beautiful building. You should photograph it," she said. In those 8 words, she encapsulated the misunderstanding of photography as an art medium. I cannot think of a better example of the mischaracterization of "camera as Xerox copy machine" rather than a tool for artistic expression.

I'm all in favor of the internet as a means of sharing our photographic images with the world. I'm also, and perhaps even more so, a fan of the physicality of photography. There is a different appreciation for an image when it's physically preserved as something lovely, something special.

Ansel Adams is undoubtedly the most famous and recognized photographer in history. How many of his images can you bring to mind? Seriously, make a list of the images you can recall from memory without looking at his books or the web.

I have about a thousand photography books in my library which probably contain an average of 150 images. There are, no doubt, tens of thousands of images that I have only glanced at and then ignored. As I've recently been thinking about this, I've gone back and looked at some of those ignored images. I've been pleasantly surprised how many of them are far better than I originally thought. It's not that they were unworthy of being published, but rather that I was not prepared to understand them.

For years, I've felt a little guilty about all the books I've purchased but never read. I've recently become aware of the fact that I'm not unusual in this regard. I have about 3,500 books in my library, a lifetime of collecting. I'm often asked if I've read all of them. I have to confess that I haven't, but I have read in all of them.

When you want to use, for example, a "Dutch angle" that tilts the horizon, you will be far better off to tilt the horizon substantially. If you tilt it just a bit, it's much more likely that viewers will think it's a mistake rather than a conscious compositional decision. Close, but a miss, will always be easily interpreted as a mistake.