Excerpted from "The Digital Photography Book." Published by Peachpit Press.

Have you ever looked at an amazing picture and wondered how the photographer pulled it off? Was it years of schooling, an apprenticeship with an expert, or the classic pact with the devil? All possibilities, but you don't have to suffer through anything like them to get similar results. What you need are these straightforward directions from a straight shooter (pun intended).

Photos like these are hard to capture, right? Wrong!

In this article, you'll get the simple ingredients needed to succeed in 14 photographic situations. To read the article as a PDF file in your Web browser, click "Recipes." You can also download the PDF to your machine for later viewing.

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Excerpted from The Digital Photography Book by Scott Kelby. Copyright © 2007. Used with permission of Pearson Education, Inc. and Peachpit Press.