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With all the high technology present in even today’s consumer cameras, its not uncommon to hear complaints from stodgy old photographers that all the skill once required to take quality photos has been replaced by automated whozits and battery-powered thingamajigs. My answer to this is to simply pull up any one of the millions of crappy snapshots posted to Flickr every day, but they still have a point. The barrier to creating truly high quality photographs has certainly been lowered with the emergence of cheap, high quality cameras, but that only goes so far. I have a pretty advanced DSLR, and I know I can’t rely on it totally for light metering, focus, or exposure settings. The best way to ensure that all your shots turn out fantastic is to play by the age-old rules of photography– 12 of which are presented for your perusal by Popular Photography.