How to smoke a cigar (and take stunning photos)

The cigar is half ritual, half prop. Cut clean, just above the cap, with a guillotine cutter — never your teeth, no matter what someone tells you at the bar. The cap is the rounded end you put in your mouth; the foot is the flat end you light. Don't mix them up.

Toast the foot first. Hold the cigar above the flame, not in it, and slowly rotate it for fifteen or twenty seconds until the foot is evenly charred. This is what separates a Cohiba from a campfire — and it's the step new smokers usually rush.

Then draw, slowly, while keeping the foot near the flame, until the ember catches in a steady ring. Take it away. Let the cigar settle for a second. Take your first proper draw.

“The smoke does the work. Let it.”

— Holding it for the camera

Hold it lower than you'd think — closer to the chest than the lips. Lean against a column or a railing or a doorway; cigars look better with architecture. Look slightly past the camera, not into it. The smoke does most of the work; let it.

Don't inhale. A cigar is for sipping, like a small piece of a long evening. The photograph that comes out best is almost always taken between the third and fourth draw, when you've forgotten anyone is watching.

— Where the cigar actually comes from

If you really want to understand the cigar in your hand, go to where it's grown. The tobacco fields of Viñales, two hours west of Havana, are some of the most beautiful country in Cuba — red earth, limestone hills, drying barns full of hanging leaves, and farmers who'll roll one fresh in front of you and explain every step.

— And one more thing

Buy your cigars from a state-licensed store — La Casa del Habano in any of its branches is reliable, and the prices are fixed. The cigars on the street, no matter how earnest the seller, are almost always counterfeit. We can recommend the closest reputable shop wherever you happen to be staying.