Photography has historically struggled to be seen as art.

Painting, one of the quintessential arts, requires skills, time and effort: one doesn't just grab a brush and come up with the Mona Lisa. Taking a photograph, though, is as easy as pressing a button on a machine.

Surely, to be considered art, there needed to be a way to distinguish the crowd of amateurs and wanna-bes from the real artists. The medium needs to be properly learned and mastered before you attempt to follow your vision.

So, you want to be a photographer?

You need to learn the rules of composition and the exposure triangle; you need to work your way up from point-and-shoot cameras all the way to -at least- full frame, if not medium or large format; you must gather years of experience before you can even call yourself a photographer; you have to master manual mode or better yet, use a film camera -the older, the better-; you must slow down and think about what you are doing, and only press the shutter at the decisive moment; you need to make sure everything in your frame is in focus and sharp; and you ought to hate on Instagram and focus instead on creating gallery-ready prints.

These are some of the worst and most dangerous myths about photography, most of them created and spread by fellow photographers. Their goal seems to be a barrier of access high enough so that they can keep the cake for themselves for a bit longer. Unfortunately for them, and fortunately for everyone who truly enjoys art, the democratization of photography is now complete: everyone has a camera, and while that doesn't make them photographers automatically, everyone has the potential to become one; furthermore, the middleman has almost disappeared as online platforms took over galleries and magazines as the preferred way to share and consume art.

In this book, I'll debunk these myths and present to you my vision of photography.

Ernest Hemingway said that "there's nothing to writing, all you do is sit down at a typewriter - and bleed". Similarly, I believe that there's nothing to photography - all you do is get out there and shoot.

It is that easy.