Photo-A-Day #1389

I have been really trying to be better about not shooting with the auto settings. I have the camera on manual now and I mess around with the settings till I get the light the way I like it (trying to get is as close to true as possible). Once I do that I try shooting a few things in the same light to get a shoot that I like. I also have the camera shooting both RAW and JPEG at the same time. The photo below is the JPEG version.

The Photo-A-Day photo is the raw version and it is not a particularly good photo or interesting but what I like about it is that it shows me what I’ve been missing while just shooting JPEG all these years.

While I take control of my camera and attempt to become a better photographer on my own, I know I need help. One thing that I am doing is reading the Nikon D80 Digital Field Guide. I am also reading many photography blogs and I’ll be attending Digital Days in April in Boston. Digital Days is a two day conference where I will learn many techniques on digital photography and on day two there is a photo shoot with live models. I need to work on my portraits and have never had a model to photograph before. This should be interesting. Also watch this blog because there will be some passes to the event

Another conference that I will be attending is Affiliate Summit East in New York City. I just firmed up my details on that one and will be attending that on August 9-11. I’m pretty jazzed up about that and cannot wait to meet Missy Ward and Shawn Collins the founders of Affiliate Summit.

And yet another conference is on my horizon and that is IZEAFest 2009. As you know I am an IZEA insider and my crew is the “I’m Not A Famous Blogger” Crew. I’ll be at IZEAFest along with Allison and Eva. If you act right now you can save $50 on admission to IZEAFest 2009. You are not going to want to miss this at all.

Happy Chinese New Year. Oh and If you have any kids this year they may turn out to be our future leaders because this is the Year of the OX and many leaders were born in the Year of the Ox, like Barack Obama. I subscribed to the White House blog today. Who knows I might become informed enough to actually talk a little politics. A very little.