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With the unlimited supply of digital cameras – point and shoots, camera phones, digital SLR – everyone is digital photographer. Snap a picture of the sunrise on your phone and bam, you’re a digital photographer. It’s the beauty of the hobby, the modern world has reduced the price of entry so that anyone that can do it. If you can afford a phone or an inexpensive point & shoot, you can get photography; nut while anyone can enter the hobby, it takes time to truly master it. Buy all the fancy equipment you want, but it won’t improve your technique and composition. I bought my digital SLR, a few accessories, and started a photography blog to enter the world of digital photography. I have a long way to go until I’m upgraded from my amateur status. Truly mastering it will take time to improve on techniques and hone all the skills. Give someone off the street a fully loaded, top of the line SLR and they probably won’t come away with any better pictures than they would’ve taken with an entry level or a point and shot. Give a professional or someone who’s master photography a camera phone, and the results will amazing you!

Today’s blog post features someone that I’ve held in high regard, especially in regard to digital photography. Tom Bowman started his hobby in digital photography back in the day when we had film and dark rooms; the man knows Ansel Adams…Ansel Adam (not to date him). Since I’ve met him, he’s abandon his full fledged SLR and opted for shooting with his iPhone (3G) or his Leica (compact). If he had to face off against someone with a DSLR, and he’d win any day. He has a natural eye for composition and lighting. To him every day is a photo shoot; a simple walk around the neighborhood will probably yield a few interesting photos. In the two year’s he’s had his iPhone 3G, he’s built a vast collection of amazing photos that I wish I could replicate with my DSLR. Just this week he launched a new site (www.iphoneansel.com), which I highly recommend that you check out. He pictures focus on composition, and he understands how to take advantage of the iPhone’s small sensor. His adventures life between his home in Whitefish and his home away from home in San Francisco, give him diverse scenery to take capture photos. His site even has a user submission portion to submit your own camera photography.

Check out iphoneansel.com when you get a chance!

Let’s go back to 1991, I was in fourth grade and living in Spain. As a kid I was even more active than I am today,  playing all types of sports – soccer, basketball, baseball, football, kickball, you name it, I played it. A few of my friends had broken their arm or leg doing mischievous things that kids do. I thought those were the luckiest kids in the world, they to wear cool casts and crutches. They were injured but they had a ton of benefits -i.e attention from girls, people signing their cast, wearing crutches -  they were practically mini-rock stars. The attention they were getting was small, but to young kid like me it seemed as if they were the New Kids On the Block getting chased by fans in the mall. I was envious and was just dying for a chance to rock a cast and crutches, to join the rock star club. My injuries never got me to rock start status. I dealt with injuries like stitches in my left eye after my friend accidentally hit me with a metal bat trying to catch a gecko; or getting bruised on my head after running in a tree stump while running around a friends house pretending to fly planes (my family will never let me live that one day). The holy grail, wearing crutches, was never within my grasps.

Fast forward to present day, and I would love to go back and slap the living day out of fourth grade Adrian. It would take twenty years, but my crazy childhood dream (if you want to call it that) would come true. While playing flag football, I tore my Achilles tendon on a routine defense play. There isn’t an interesting story to tell; I was running when I suddenly heard a large pop and a feeling as if I had been shot with a BB gun or kicked by someone in the calf. I went down shortly after it happened but only after I embarrassed myself by telling the referee that someone had kicked or thrown a ball at me (in reality there was no one around me). Now that I’ve had surgery, I’ll have to be in a boot and crutches for at least six to eight weeks. Time that is not needed to evaluate my future with crutches; I loathed them after day one. I’m not sure what fourth grade Adrian was thinking, but if someone ever invents a time traveling machine, a hot tub time machine, I’m going to pay him a little visit. Better to focus that young mind on better things like building Facebook before Mark.

The thing I hate most about this injury is losing my mobility and my active life. The crutches themselves rub up against my armpits and will probably cause calluses on my palms. Getting help from people has been big, but I’d rather be up on my feet and doing things on my own. Fourth grade Adrian never thought of those things or missing out on doing things he loved, being active. I’m devastated that I can’t play soccer, softball, football, basketball, or simply go for a run. My goal is to recover soon enough from this to walk around in Hawaii (in Oct) and to get back in full form for ski season.

The upside to this injury is that I can spend more taking pictures and writing more blog posts. Looks like I’ll have more time to have to dedicate to the site. Look for more to come shortly.

Special thanks to my wonderful girlfriend for taking great care of me. I also have my mom coming out to SF next week to help out. Love them both!

A quick search on urbandictionary.com will bring a slew of terms that would describe someone like me. I’m a gadget freak, gadget-holic, gizmoteer, gadget-gollum, or a even a tucker (the one related to Tech); I even experience gadget lust. The new iPad 2 is coming out and I NEED it – I already have an iPad and I know there are rumors of the 3 coming out in September- but I have to have it. I justify my purchase by saying that I need two because Brittany needs one, but in reality I’m the one that wants it (though she has hopped off the kindle bandwagon and realized how great the iPad really is). I’m happy with the iPhone 4 but I was already on the iPhone 5 bandwagon last July. I get a new laptop, and by day 2 I’ve startd researching for my next purchase. This trend applies to all gadgets not just small electronics. When we moved to SF we purchased an Audi A4, and I’m already biting at the bit to upgrade to a Q5. I have a serious problem but at least now I acknowledge it and save for my vices. I’m sure my problem will go away when I have kids, but that’s a long way away .For now I’m taking baby steps to correct my problem, I call it the Gadget-holic Rehab Program.

The first step in the program – Identify you have a problem. Everyone that knows me, knows that I have a problem. I was given a Canon Rebel XS as a gift from my parents that pushed me from a point and shoot to a DSLR. Less than a year later, I was already researching new cameras when I found the Canon Rebel T2. The camera offered higher megapixels, a few additional features, and HD video – I had to have it! I sold my old body and purchased the new one within a few weeks. Shortly thereafter I realized that camera makers come out with camera’s faster than Charlie Sheen’s fall from Two and a Half Men,and camera makers love suckers like me. In most cases going from camera model A to B won’t make a material difference; you will get some additional features and a few more megapixels, but not enough of a difference to tell the difference in your pictures. Going from model A to E might help, but that’s also subjective. The biggest gain is going from a entry level DSLR to a full frame camera (wiki entry – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full-frame_digital_SLR).

The second step in my program is to inform others so they don’t make the same mistake. My advice for camera lovers is to hold off on upgrading your equipment, namely your camera body. If you have an entry level camera and your itching to upgrade to a new model, hold off and instead focus on improving your technique. Going from a Canon XS orXSi to a T2i or T3i (or D60 to D90) isn’t worth the investment. Instead work with what you have and improve your composition or lighting. The quality of your pictures might improve with a new body, but spending time to improve your technique will have a high return on investment than shelling out a few hundred dollars on the new gear. The t3i is out but Canon isn’t going to fool me again. I’m going to hold off on buying a new body until I’m ready to upgrade to a full frame (5D Mark, 7D, or whatever else is out then). I’m going to focus on increasing my photography aptitude by mastering lighting.

In order to improve on lighting, I want to put an emphasis on shooting in manual mode.I know shooting in manual mode doesn’t make you a expert but I’m going to shoot in that mode as much as possible so I can improve on lighting/exposure via the apeture/shutter/iso co-relationship. I understand the relationship but it still takes a little work, I have to stop and think about it when I’m taking pictures. I want it to become second nature so don’t lose special shots that require you to make decisions in a snap. I could just shoot in Program mode when those circumstances arise, but that would be a huge cop out. I’ll still use the Aperture and Shutter priority, because those are vital, but I will no longer rely on program mode to bail me out. The more you know and improve on your exposure technique the closer your pictures will resemble the scene as it’s natively captured by your eyes.

So that’s it, my two step Gadget-Holic Rehab program. The program isn’t guaranteed to work but it promises to not leave you like Lindsey Lohan after her latest rehab stint. I’m still in work in progress, I’ll officially be cured when I don’t buy the latest and greatest Apple product.

Bottom Line: Save yourself the money don’t upgrade your camera body until you’ve honed your skills and you’re ready for a full-frame SLR.

Here at last, a photography related post…

If you recently purchased, or are thinking of purchasing, a digital SLR, there are two accessories I’d recommend to go with the camera. The first thing is a prime lens; a prime lens is a lens with a set focal length (i.e. 50mm) that also has a low aperture setting. I’ll talk more about

prime lenses in a future post, but some of the benefits of prime lenses include improved shooting in low light conditions and artsy picture compositions using a short dept of field (i.e. focus on one piece of the image while making the rest blurry). The second thing I’d recommend is photo management software. I currently use Adobe’s Lightroom 3 but there are other alternatives like Apple’s Aperture. Here are some of the benefits of using Lightroom to manage, develop, and share your pictures.

Managing Pictures

Lightroom has five major modules – Library, Develop, Slideshow, Print, Web – and the Library module is where users manage their pictures. Most free photo management software like Google’s Picasa or Apple’s iPhoto, are primarily focused on the rudimentary functions that are needed to manage your photos. These functions include managing the library and offering basic photo editing functions (cropping, red-eye correction, filtering, etc). When it comes these functions, Lightroom doesn’t offer a large advantage over it’s free counterparts. I still use Picasa web to import my pictures from my camera to my computer, and to do my first review of my pictures, because Picasa doesn’t hog as much of your computer’s memory resources. Lightroom does, however, offer some benefits that the other software do not have or do not promote. Using the “Collections” or “Publish Services” features, you can create collections of pictures on your local computer or on online services like Flickr. I recently signed up for a Flickr pro account and I can create online collections that are uploaded to my Flickr account with the click of a button as opposed to having to use Flickr’s Uploader. Other software packages offer similar options, but none are as seamless as Lightroom’s.

Some other useful features within the Library module are the meta data fields, photo comparison, and keyboard shortcuts. The meta data fields are data fields that are stored about a picture; they  can be automatically set by the camera (date taken, camera used, lens, etc), or data supplied by the user (rating, text, flags, colors, etc). The meta data can be set when you import a group of pictures, managing a single picture, or modifying a group of pictures in post processing.  You can use the meta data to search pictures, or to manage pictures when you are in the other modules. The comparison tool allows you to compare two or three pictures, which is essential when you are trying to decide which pictures to keep within a repetitive set. The most commonly used feature, keyboard shortcuts, allow you to do things without using your mouse. Lightroom has keyboard shortcuts for every action within every module to make commonly used tasks easier for the user. One useful reference guide around keyboard shortcuts can be found here.  All of the features in the Library module  are designed to improve the user experience when managing a large number of pictures.

Develop

The Develop module is where Lightroom leaps above many other free alternatives. The module is the new age dark room for digital photography. Using the module you can transform pictures into professional looking pictures. Lightroom is still only meant to be a tool to supplement photographers, composition is still key when taking pictures. In addition to the common functions that most editing software provide – cropping, red-eye adjustment, etc – the tool allows you to edit color, exposure, contrast, brightness, clarity, vibrance, tonal curve, and many, many more. You can apply changes to part of the picture, or to the entire thing. You can apply your own edits or use one of the standard or user defined presets. More to come on the presets.

I used to shoot all my pictures in JPEG, a common file format used by most digital cameras that compresses the picture format. The JPEG format is meant to save room since it’s a compressed file format, but it doesn’t give users the same ability to adjust the picture in post processing activities. Now I shoot in RAW format, which is a larger file that saves all the picture settings without compressing the file, so I can adjust the picture in post processing in Lightroom (JPEG vs. Raw). I typically use the Develop module to:

• Modify Exposure – You won’t always get the right exposure in your pictures, and Lightroom allows you to modify pictures that you might have under/over exposed. You can touch up parts of your picture or use the gradient filter to apply it to the entire picture.
• Tweak the clarity or vibrance - Some times you can make parts of your picture pop by adjusting the clarity (decreasing the clarity gives portraits the soft feel that you commonly see in professional pictures). Adjusting the vibrance can also make certain colors pop out.

  

• Color Modification - you can control all colors within the color spectrum to adjust how much of each color appears in your picture. One common use of this feature is color isolation (i.e. a black and white picture that shows an object in red).

  

• Other Calibration Elements - Every camera comes with it’s limits and Lightroom allows you to adjust for some of the vulnerabilities of your camera or lenses. You can increase or decrease vignetting (where the corner of your pictures are black) or you can adjust the hues and saturation of certain colors. Regardless of what equipment you’re using, be aware of it’s limitations so you know what adjustments to make while taking the picture or post processing.

The beauty of Lightroom is that it is designed for users of all levels. If you find all the settings to be intimidating, you can use the some of the provided presets or download some from the web. The presets are pre-configured adjustments that can be used as minor tweaks or creative outlets (download some free presets from here). Advanced users can by-pass the presets and modify pictures as if they were in a dark room without all the hassle. I consider myself an intermediate Lightroom user; some times I’ll use one of the presets while other times I’ll roll up my sleeves and use the manual configuration. The Develop tool is not meant to develop pictures and it is not a design tool like Adobe’s Photoshop.

The changes you make to your pictures aren’t applied to the picture until you save, or export, your pictures. This allows you to make modifications to a picture without affecting the original until you’re ready to apply the changes. The one disadvantage of shooting in RAW is that you have to export all your pictures to JPEG for most programs to ready the file. I tend to review all my pictures in bundles, modify those that need it, and export them all to JPEG for sharing. I tend to only keep the RAW format for pictures that I want to develop in the future; RAW files are larger so they quickly fill up your hard drive.

Sharing

The modules I use the least are the Slideshow, Print, and Web modules. Those modules come in handy if you want to share your pictures without having advanced coding knowledge to build a website or manually cutting a slide show. The Web module gives you multiple templates to easily share your pictures via flash or non-flash galleries. I use my wordpress blog to share my pictures, but it does require some coding knowledge. If you aren’t tech savvy I’d recommend using Lightroom to share your pictures without any coding.

Lightroom is a powerful tool that should be in every photographer’s arsenal. Picasa and iPhoto are commonly used programs but Lightroom offers many advantages for managing, developing, and sharing digital photographs. You can find more about purchasing Lightroom on Adobe’s site. They offer student prices, and you can easily find the software on those BitTorrent sites (not that I’m advising you to do that). You’ve spent the money on expensive DSLR, now make sure you have the right tools to take advantage of that camera. This article gives a high level overview of Lightroom, reach out to me if you have questions about how to complete certain activities. I’ll write some specific tutorials in the future.

I officially have ski stoke and proud of it! Being Black and Spanish, and having spent most of my life in Spain and Virginia Beach, probably doesn’t make me the best candidate to become a skier. But after I started dating Brittany a few years ago, I got into skiing; I had been two times prior to us dating but I wasn’t any good. Once we started dating I was thrown into a family of avid skiers, and I had to pick it up fast to fit. Tom and Carrie, my informal ski instructors, have skied for most of their lives and are frequent back country skiers. They taught me the right techniques, and to this day they still make sure I’m bending my knees and planting my poles. Brittany and Charley started skiing at an early age and have skiing in their blood. They too have taught me well, but most importantly they taught me to ski with style. The Bowman family took me under their wing and taught me everything I needed to know about skiing. Now we try to go skiing as often as we can. Here’s where I’ve been skiing and about some of my experiences. I’m trying to pass my ski stoke on to as many people as I can.

Wintergreen, VA-  In college I went out to Wintergreen because it was the only place to really go in VA; it was the first time I’d ever gone skiing. I don’t remember much about my skiing ability or the mountain – the evaluation is only 3,5,15 ft and only has 26 trails – but I do remember sticking to the greens. If you’re not from Virginia, I doubt you ever make it there. If live in VA, I’d recommend trying to leave the state anytime you want to go skiing.

Killington, VT - My second ski experience was a few years after my experience in Virginia. I went on a ski trip to Killington, VT with a bunch of friends from my GE IMLP program.  Killington offers some of the best skiing on the east coast. This was my first real ski experience, and I was able to venture onto greens and blues. While the skiing was fun, the best part of the trip was the fun we had at our vacation rental- beer pong, snow angels in the snow, and so many fun times with the group. In terms of skiing, it was my first experience riding a gondola and by the end of the trip I finally learned how stop myself without throwing having to fall to the ground. I spent most of the trip trying to stay far away from black diamond runs because I didn’t want to end up rolling down it like a snowball. If you trying to find a good place on the east coast, check out Killington, they guarantee that their lifts won’t collapse like that other resort (too soon?!).

Whitefish, MT - Two Christmas’ ago I went up to visit the Bowman family, who live near the Whitefish ski resort. Whitefish offers some great skiing with a small town feel. If you’re ever there, make sure to call up the Bowman’s if you’re in need of some local hazing. On my first trip with them, my fourth day ever on skis, they forced me down some double black runs with fresh powder and trees. Thanks to their peer pressure, I’ve been able to conquer just about any in-bound terrain I’ve faced. I was their extreme make over challenge, and they’ve made me a believer in their approach. I now use that same approach to teach any of my friends that just starting off. My buddy Sean can attest to that after a weekend in Park City and Brighton.

Aspen, CO – I’m fortunate to have experienced Aspen because we have some great friends with a place there. The town is like no other, and is one favorite places to visit with our friends Eli and Elana. The skiing is a bit pricier but it’s well worth it to get rid from all the crowds at other Colorado resorts. If you’re ever up at Ajax, make sure to get one of the red gondola units that offer iPod/iPhone stereo connections; it’s the best way to get pumped up before the big run down. Another great thing about Aspen is that one lift ticket gives you access to four resorts. Aspen was the first place I skied after Killington, and I still remember my best fall. I was going down a steep blue run trying to pick up speed when I caught an edge and had a yard sale. After losing both of my skis and poles, I slid all the way down the slope to a orange safety net. The fall didn’t hurt and I was glad to provide entertainment for the group. I actually enjoyed falling when I was first learning. I still fall a few times but it’s usually because I’m timid in powder or my legs want to give out at the bottom of a tough run.

Salt Lake City/Park City, UT – Salt Lake City/Park City is probably my favorite place to go skiing. I started going there because a few of my friends from work are from the area. The city offers a multitude of ski resorts are just 20-30 minutes away from the airport. Salt Lake is an amazingly beautiful, but the Mormon culture does put a damper on the city/night-life. In Utah I’ve experienced some of the best skiing of my short skiing career – powder skiing at the Canyons, blue-bird days at Park city, incredible tree-laden runs at Brighton, ski-bunny skiing at Deer Valley, and local flavor at Snowbird. I have yet to experience Alta, but that’s next on my list. The salt water lake makes for some of the softest snow you can experience. In my case, it offered the perfect snow to fall and eat it;) When I get a chance I’ll post a video of me trying to take a jump out of a tree run that ends up with me ejecting from my skis. My only gripe with Utah is that they need to work on getting some more black skiers. I can typically count them on one hand.

Tahoe, CA -With this latest trip, I was finally able to experience the Sierra Nevada mountains. Lake Tahoe is the Bay Area’s favorite ski area since it’s only 190 miles north of the city and it gets large amounts of precipitation. Rain in San Francisco is a good indication that there will be some snow in Tahoe, which was exactly the case when it poured in the city this past week. The drive to Tahoe normally takes 3 hours, but our drive up took 6 hours as the storm made for some treacherous road conditions. I don’t get why mini-van’s and two wheel drive cars ignore warnings that four wheel drive is needed; they shouldn’t be surprised when they end up on the side of the road in a snow bank. The first day we went to Squaw Valley, it had just snowed 24″ inches the day before. I had a rough start to the trip – I left my jacket back at the house, I forgot my googles, and I couldn’t seem to turn on my first run up KT-22. That day will now live in infamy and I’ll always be the guy who people run a checklist by before we leave the house. To make matters worse, it felt like all of California was on the mountain; I wasn’t impressed on how Squaw Valley managed the crowds. It seemed like a rough day for most people because we saw a record number of skiers on the ground or searching for their buried skis. On the second day of skiing we made our way up to Alpine Meadows. It was a perfect day, we had a blue-bird day and we had a group of friends who knew the mountain. We hiked up part of the mountain and got to the backside bowl that was pretty much untouched. I can’t wait until I am able to go cat or heli skiing because nothing beats ripping down fresh powder that is untouched. Tahoe offers some amazing skiing with an amazing background in Lake Tahoe. The mountain also has the most diverse crowd with a “larger” number of african-american or asian people.

So those are all the places I’ve been, but I can’t wait to get out there and try some new resorts. I’d love to get up to Whistler, ski the summer in Argentina, or experience some European skiing! If you’re into skiing I’d recommend checking out backcountry.com for new gear. They offer one of the best online stores to buy ski, snow, or hiking great. They price match just about any store and they have one of the best return policies in the country. You can buy stuff there and return it at anytime for any reason. You can purchase skis, try them for the season, and return them if you have any issues. I’ll never buy skis or ski equipment anywhere else. I bought my 2011 Armada ARV’s in December and they price matched the skis two months after I purchased them. Take that Walmart!

I signed up for twitter, I still can’t believe it. I’ve bashed the damn site for so long because I don’t understand it’s usefulness. I guess I’ll find out how “great” it is soon. I wasn’t even sure who I’d follow. The only reason I decided to join is because we were talking about it recently at dinner with a few friends and I caught myself talking about a new technology as if I were my parents. For once, I’m a late adopter. I need a new gadget/technology to come out so I can reassert myself as an early adopter. After I signed up for my twitter account, I signed up for myspace too…

Want to follow me on twitter?……why?!  check me out on twitter – agregoryvt If you a have some interesting people that you follow, send them my way. I always have needed to hear what people have had to say in 140 characters or less.

My parent’s did well and taught me to share when I was younger. I followed that for most of my childhood, with the exception of sharing a few of my toys with some of my younger cousins. The main purpose of this site is to continue that practice .You’ll notice that most of my pictures of watermarks. Those are there for basic copyrighting rules, not to prevent users from printing my pictures. If you want the original version of my picture for printing, send me an email and I’ll forward it along. Just remember to share where you got it with others! When you share photography on the web, you have to trust that people we’ll give credit where credit is due. Reach out to me at adrian@cameraplus1.com

*The picture for this post was taken from scrapetv.com

This post has nothing to do with photography, but I promise one of those soon.

Fear is such a bull-shit state of mind. It’s an emotion that you bring on yourself. Unlike other things in life, it’s gets worse with age. The older you get, the more information you have to process and associate with something you think you fear. I’ve decide to write this entry to help conquer a few things that brings some trepidation in my life. What’s life with fear if it starts affecting things you love to do? And two things that I love to do is travel and to ski.

My biggest fear while growing up, outside of the usual scary movies (I had a brother who terrorized me with Halloween, Candy Man, Bloody Mary it, you name it), was my fear of heights. It turns out my fear of heights was also brought on by my brother’s teasing. While the  fear is minimal today, my knees still get a little week when I’m on very tall buildings. The last time I was in the Sears Tower (now known as the Willis), I could only stand on this attraction for a couple of seconds. Give me crap about it if you wish, but what might seem like a cake walk isn’t as easy as one might think when you’re looking down 103 stories up. If you’re ever in Chicago, the Sear’s tower is now a must see because of the ledge alone. The Hancock building has better views, but the ledge makes up for it.

Fast forward to today. All of a sudden I’ve decided that I can’t handle turbulence while flying. This one I can’t blame on my brother; instead I blame the airlines. I love to travel so they are going to have to change a few things in order to make this relationship work. My anxiety all starts when the pilot comes over the PA system to announce that we’ll be having a bumpy take off or to advise that the crew has to suspend the in flight service because of turbulence. For Southwest, Frontier, United, and Virgin I have a simple solution – give the crew body guard like ear pieces to communicate things that concern them. Bypass the communication to the passengers, and let them guess a bit. Now we’d know that something might be up when the seat belt sign is on, or the crew isn’t walking around anymore. The last thing I need is for the pilot to give me advance warning about something I don’t want to hear; I think most people prefer surprises.

My next issue is an extension of my fear of heights, but it too is bs. I consider myself an intermediate skier; I can handle almost all terrain but I need to work on my technique a bit. Outside of a cliff, I can handle most single black or double block runs. When I get to the top of a mountain that has a ton of exposure – that’s when your on the part of the mountain that doesn’t impede your view down, like being on this ridge) – I tend to get nervous and pretend that I can’t ski. I get nervous and worry that I might fall and go tumbling down the side of the mountain. Instead of being my fearless self and plowing through the run, I go the speed of a little kid pie’ing down the mountain. At some point, my friends are going to have enough of it. It’s bs because no matter what lies on the other side of the cliff I know I can ski down it. I really have nothing to be scared about.

This past weekend I went skiing in Aspen with a some great friends. On the trip I found a simple solution to my problem. On the way up a lift I heard the Bob Marley’s “Three Little Birds”, famous for the lyrics “everything little thing is going to be alright”. At the very top of the mountain where I had issues with the exposure, I simply hummed the song. I ended up using the song again on our way out from Aspen. We were fortunate enough to get a prop plane on a day where the weather system decided not to give us any smooth air. Side note – airlines, please get rid of prop planes, no one likes them. When the pilot ruined the surprise, I got a little anxious again and the song popped in my head. So there you have it, a cheesy solution to a simple problem.

This post isn’t meant to be an antidote to anyone’s problems, but take it for what it’s worth. A fear is simply a bull-shit state of mind. Find anything to distract you and to help it go away. The next time you encounter your version of turbulence or exposure, just start humming away…”Every little thing is going to be alright…..”

Happy New Year to all! It’s a new year, which means everyone’s either out at the gym or trying to complete one of their many new year’s resolutions. I can’t say I’ve ever done a good job of making resolutions or following them, so this year my resolution is to make a resolution and to actually follow through with it. For photography, my resolution is to simply improve! In order to do that I’m going to have to start following some simple rules – take my camera to more places, stop being shy with it, and to start coming up with projects out of my comfort zone. I’m hoping to start at least posting one picture a week on this blog to help with that.

My personal resolution is to continue learning, which applies to all aspects of my life, including photography. Up until graduation it was easy to follow this because like all college kids, I was in an environment that fostered learning. After college, I think you have to work more at it. Ever since I finished the IMLP program at GE, I’ve haven’t been as good about going out of my way to learn new things. I’ve done what has been required of me – learning the business that I am in. By following that I’ve excelled in my current role but satisfied with my other personal accomplishments. My resolution is simply to go out of my way to learn new things.

So here’s to keeping my resolution. Now at least my being held accountable by my blog aka “diary”. Anyone have any interesting new year’s resolution’s they liked to share?

Not until I watched the Social Network did I complete understand it. Why would Mark Zuckerberg turn down billions to sell Facebook, that’s crazy money for a site that wasn’t even making money. Yeah he wanted to innovate, but why not take your money and use it to build something else. I thought the Facebook fad would fade and he would be out of billions. I guess know I know why I’m stuck as a Product Manager at JP and he’s running a company whose value continues to grow. I have to give it to Facebook, they are firing on all cylinders right now. They are integrating into all parts of our web-life so catlike. People are concerned about privacy, yet every yearns for a true social experience. In order to have a true social experience, we have to let some of our privacy go. We have to be caution about our data, but in order to reap some of the rewards we have to be willing to share information with others. But I’ll leave that for another blog post on another day. Today I want to highlight Facebook Connect and Open Graph.

Facebook Connect and the Open Graph protocol are just two ways Facebook is allowing websites to integrate with Facebook. Good job Mark, way to pull moves that will ensure you’ll never be like _space. Leave it to Fox/New Corp to take a company down like that, not that it was a great company to big with.

Open Graph is a simple way to integrate a website with social graph and preps a site for the Facebook “like” feature. Facebook Connect allows you to integrate Facebook registration, login, and enable a true social experience on your site. With it users can login with their existing Facebook login, and interact with your site using the “like” and comment functionality. By putting a couple of lines of code into my blog site, I was able to set up the Open Graph information and enable Facebook connect with xfbml (yes they have their own mark up langauge). Once that was all set up, you can add simple Facebook plug-ins with ease.I think it’s a pretty simple task even if you don’t spend a lot of time coding.

If you have a personal site or even a small business site, I think you’d be foolish not to integrate your site with Facebook. In this post there are links to the Facebook Developer’s page that help make it a simple task. I applaud Facebook for continuing to innovate and not turning into _space; I even like their new profile re-design. Mark and company recently trademarked the word “Face”; let’s hope that they don’t take their new products to a level that becomes annoying. I know Mark doesn’t need a pat on the back from this guy, but job well done!

I’m subscribed to Digitial Photography School’s RSS feed and recently read this article on 14 ways to improve your photography. Before I go into the article, I’ll comment briefly on the site itself.  I’ve had a hard time finding photography sites, but so far this is one of my favorites. Tthe web is littered with a sea of websites dedicated to photography but finding some with quality content has so far been cumbersome. If you have any to share, please comment below.  Digital Photography School (DPS) gets to be a little repetitive with their subjects, but I’ve found a some useful articles on taking pictures or processing techniques.

I’m spotlighting this specific DPS article because it offers a few practical ways to improve your photography. In the coming months I’ll take some of their advice and share the sets from the sessions; the one’s I’m most interested  being #7 Pick a color, any color, #10 Find a setting, stick with it, and #12 Find Something you’re not comfortable shooting, and go after it. #10,Find a setting, stick with it will be beneficial because I’m not extremely comfortable with the manual setting; I love to shoot in Aperture or Shutter speed priority. The times I have explored with the manual setting, I’ve been surprised by some of the results.  The best advice I’ve received for shotting in manual was to start at 1/60shutter speed and 5.6 fstop, and adjust each of the setting from there based on the lighting conditions and the subject you want to shoot. I found that advice to be extremely helpful when I was shooting in indoors with low light. I also think a project related to #12 will do be good because I’m not comfortable using my camera in front of random people. I feel like I’m violating their privacy or that they’re going wonder why this idiot wants to take a picture of them. My comfortable level will have to increase if I ever want to take some very interesting pictures of people when I travel. If you take a look at most of my pictures, you’ll notice that a lot of my travel photography is either of landscapes or of people I know. At some point, I need to go out and only shoot pictures of random people. It’s probably a way to meet some interesting people.

I do have advice that relates to the articles fourth improvement – Minimize Your Possibilities. I tried to recently live by this and I think it did more harm then good. On my last trip to Spain I kept telling myself that I would only take pictures of  things that I would want to use later for to showcase or print. I still ended up taking a couple thousand pictures, but I was left without the touristy pictures that make for great memories. One of photography’s great draws is that people are able to capture moments in time to re-live them later. My mom loves to take pictures with her point and shoot, and this probably applies to all spanish women. Occasionally I’ll find myself getting annoyed with her when she wants to take a picture of a useless building or the tenth picture of a me sitting next to a monument. What I’m realizing is that I’m slowly becoming a photography snob by not realizing that people love digital photography for many different reasons. My mom loves to snap away, and I should just be happy that she loves to take pictures to re-live moments in the future. She probably gets carried away with how many “fotitos” she wants to take, but I’m sure Brittany feels the same way when we stop along a random road to take a shot of the landscape. The term “fotitos” means little photos in spanish.  I coined the term when my cousins, Cristina and Sonia, and their friend, Monste,  came to visit the US from Spain. They had us taking pictures every second of the trip;  we have twenty or thirty shots of the courthouse in Virgina Beach – boring to us but exciting to others. So I’ve learned to know when to minimize your possibilities. Taking a million pictures might limit your creativity but you’ll still capture some important memories or get lucky with a picture that you didn’t think would turn out great. In the end, you can always delete the pictures you don’t need.

If you have any basic photography tips that you’d like to share, leave a comment. With all the settings on the camera, it’s always helpful to have tips on things to do while shooting. I’d love to hear what tips others find useful.

Welcome to the start of CameraPlus1! I finally decided to create a blog to share some of my pictures with the world (and by the world I mean a few friends who are bored at work) and to share my photography beyond just Brittany and myself.  I’m fortunate enough to share everything with Brittany, but at some point I’m sure she is going to get sick of me saying, “come check this picture out.”

My love for photography initially started in college with my interest in documenting the weekend shenanigans. My freshman year I would take a disposable camera out with me everywhere I went.  Digital cameras existed but they were too expensive and there was a high likelihood of having some sort of mishap and ruining it. At that point it was all about snapping pictures of the weekend so we could re-live them a few weekends later when the they were developed and put on a disc. I took a big step up when my parents gave me a compact Casio Exilim for Christmas. It was a great gift, and I captured a ton of memories with it (and the many other Exilim’s I went through).   I still have most of my colleges pictures that survived the famous computer crash of 2003, but fortunately for everyone, this blog won’t be used to highlight any of those.

In 2008, my next chapter in digital photography began when my parents gave me my digital SLR as a Christmas gift. I have to give a shout out to my parents for always being there for me when I needed it – they have always supported me 100% and it’s one of the main reasons I am the person who I am today. Once I started to explore my digital SLR, a new world of photography emerged. I was no longer just interested in snapping pictures to simply capture memories, I wanted to create pictures that were inspiring. I’m still just starting out, but I’m slowly gaining more and more experience with every shot I take. Along with my new view on photography, came a new bug -  the photography bug to buy all the “necessary equipment.” I’ve purchased a few things, but I’m realizing that less about the equipment and more about what you can do with it. Another shout out goes to Tom, Brittany’s dad. I’ve been able to learn from some of his techniques and photographs. He taught me that it’s all about taking advantage of what your have and less about the equipment – the man takes amazing pictures with his iPhone. Photography is all about learning from those around you and from every shot you take; and that’s what I hope to do. Everyone has their own style and it’s about defining yours and making it your own.

Camera Plus One is my way of growing as a digital photographer. There are so many great photographers out there and many that try to do it for a living. For me this is just a hobby; a hobby to capture the world through the my camera. I hope you enjoy this blog and come back to it to check out the adventures of my camera. I welcome any feedback and would love to hear from others on ways that I can improve.