Another useful resource is http://twipphoto.com/ for their podcasts.

Don’t get me wrong, it won’t replace Photoshop, but it’s a huge time saver. With RAW you can change camera settings in CNX, just as if you’d done it before you took the shot. Also the WB dropper function is superb!

Nice shots though. I love my D90!

I haven’t shot any RAW out and about yet–it’s something I *will* do soon, but I’m learning different things first and staying with JPG now. RAW + better PhotoShop skills are some of the next things on my list to work on.

That being said, when I just shot a few RAW pics in my office they ranged from 10.5mb to 11.5mb.

Hope that helps!

Thank you! And generally I write about productivity/happiness with a slant toward technology. Not sure if that helps!

Aaron,

Thanks for the advice here. I’ve been paying attention to the WB but not well enough…so many settings to consider!! (however, I think I wanted that brown-ish tint on the little kid one, maybe my taste is just off for now…)

I’ve been shooting JPEGs but plan to switch to RAW in the coming months, and yes one of the reasons is because of the WB you can adjust afterwards…it’s just one more step that I don’t want to add to my post-production yet, but will soon enough :-). The more important thing is for me to develop an eye and a better taste for all this…

As for me being a natural, no…sadly way too much of this is learned.

Thanks for all the insight and look forward to going shooting together when we’re both back in town!

My only critique would be to watch your white balance. With both of the first two pictures, the WB is washed out a bit. The one with the orange-shirted kid looks great but the picture has a slight brownish tint to the whole thing. The second one is a fantastic riverscape, but is tinted blue too much.

You can adjust white balance a few ways. One, you can do it on your camera and as a bonus, your camera also has an auto setting that is usually pretty good (AWB). The second, and the one I prefer, is to make sure you shoot in the RAW if your camera supports it, then post process. I’d say use Aperture 2 because thats what I use and there is no more fun piece of software than that… but… you hate Macs. :) So, maybe Adobe Lightroom 2 is a good alternative.

The point is your eye can compensate for lighting and identify what is white and what is not. You have to tell your camera what is white for it to compensate. Shooting RAW means you can do this after the fact, but regardless….

Great, fantastic shots. You’re a natural!