Introduction to Photography

Starting out in photography is a wonderful time full of creativity and discovery. Unfortunately, it can also be a time of wrecked nerves, confusing advice from friends, and frustration as you learn a new camera and try to capture on film or digital media what you saw with your eye. There are some basic concepts you can keep in mind that can make your first attempts at photography much more rewarding and less frustrating.
Composition
WordNet Search defines composition as "something that is created by arranging several things to form a unified whole". That is exactly what it is. The composition of your photograph is the combination of elements coming together to create the whole image. Your subject, lighting, background, foreground, focus, and even color scheme will all combine to create the composition. Just like a painter may spend a long time determining the exact placement of flower petals before beginning to paint, photographers should take the time to objectively view the composition of a scene before pressing the shutter release button.

Subject
What is your photograph about? Without knowing the answer to this question your image will never work. Your subject is what you want the viewer to see first when they look at your image. It can be small or large, sometimes your subject will be a spider, other times it may be an entire mountain. No matter what your subject is, you must consciously choose a subject in order to make your image work.

Rule of Thirds
The rule of thirds explains where to place your subject in the image. Imagine that your image is divided into nine equal squares, basically a tic-tac-toe board with the lines equally spaced. The four points where the lines cross are the strongest focal points of your image. The lines that make up the squares are secondary strong points. The human eye is naturally drawn to these spaces within a frame, not the center of the frame. Make use of this to maximize the impact of your images by placing your subject along one of these lines or intersection points. If you are doing a portrait "head shot" of someone, place their eyes along these points and lines.
Background and Foreground
A photograph is a 2 dimensional representation of a 3 dimensional scene. This means that the camera effectively "flattens" the scene. Background is anything behind your subject. If there is a tree directly behind a person's head it will appear that the tree is growing out of their head. Likewise, a fence could seem to grow out of the side of a person. Foreground is anything in front of your subject. Foreground is just as important. If you are shooting a beautiful lake sunset but there is an ugly tire in the water's edge the photograph can be ruined.
Focus
Will your subject be sharply focused or fuzzy? Will you have the foreground and the subject in focus but the background fuzzy? Focus will make or break your image. This is where aperture, F-Stop, and depth of field come into play. This is how you begin to control how your camera flattens the scene. In general, you want the subject and a small part of the foreground in focus but the background blurry. This helps avoid distracting lines around your subject. However, there are times you will want the entire scene in focus, such as landscape scenes. A good rule of thumb regarding your F-Stop is to remember that the larger the F-Stop number, the more of the scene will be in focus and the more light you need to record the image.
Lighting
Photography is the art of capturing light reflected from subjects onto a film or digital surface. Always be aware of your lighting. If your subject is your child but his or her face is too dark to see, the image will not work. When you look at a scene, your eyes constantly adjust for the different lighting situations in the scene. When you take a photograph, the camera only records one light situation. Every camera is slightly different on how it "meters" or reads the amount of light in a scene. Some general rules of thumb are: avoid harsh light behind your subject, watch out for dark shadows, and watch out for whites that glare in the light.
Color
The world is in color. Sometimes the colors are white, black, and grey, but it is still color. While your subject will already have a color of its own, pay attention to how that color interacts with your background and foreground. If your subject is green and the background is green, your subject is liable to be hard to see in the image. In contrast, if your subject is red and the background purple, you may be able to see the subject very well but the clashing colors can distract from the subject. Understanding color will help you fine tune the feeling of your images.
Motion
There are two choices with motion in a scene. Freeze it with a fast shutter speed or let it appear as a blur on the image by using a slower shutter speed. Either choice is just that, a choice. The choice is up to you but you should always make that conscious choice of which type of motion you want. Also, remember that if you have a camera that your viewfinder shows you the actual view through the lens, what you see if the viewfinder is not what you will capture. As the camera records an image your view will be blocked for a fraction of a second. It is that fraction of a second your camera records. The best advice I ever received with sports photography was to remember that if you see it in your viewfinder you missed it.