Other Sources of Information

• Other photographers – Best source of information I’ve found is talking to other people who have done this for a while and know their stuff. If you don’t actually know the photographer who took that awesome shot you love, you can still look at their photos, and see what they did. Repeat rinse wash.

• Flickr.com – Flickr is awesome because not only do you get to see quality shots and see who the better photographers are and follow their work, you also, in many cases, get to see the settings on their camera when they took the shot via the EXIF data. This is unbelievably cool and useful.

• Nikonians.org – I find the nikonians blog interesting for general technique, and gear discussions. There are a lot of people on there who have many many years of experience. The forum is heavily moderated, so mind your Ps and Qs, but that generally yields a pretty good signal to noise ratio. The UI looks like it’s from the epoch but it gets the job done. Sadly they made it a paid thing, but its probably worth it. I bought my 70-200 from their sale forum, fwiw.

• Nikongear.com – this is a gear discussion site. pretty good stuff, but probably not as comprehensive as Nikonians, albeit easier to navigate. I joined both, I may or may not renew my subscription to this one, but its not a bad site.

• bythom.com – Thom Hogan’s books are the gold standard of technical manuals for Nikon cameras. If he makes one for your camera, buy it. His site is extremely insightful, and he is one of those guys whom everyone listens to, and for good reason. He’s known to post on nikonians, dpreview, nikongear, etc, so you will see him everywhere. I listen when he does.

• kenrockwell.com – Ken Rockwell is kind of a toolbox, no doubt. But his site is great if you want to learn about every lens that Nikon has ever made, see a picture, get some basic specs, etc. He says basically the same things about every lens, so you can pretty much ignore his commentary, but I still use it, mostly because he’s really good at SEO and his results are the first things that come up when I search for a lens.

• naturfotograf.com – This is Bjorn Rorslet’s site. He is an extremely technical nature photographer, and you will learn more than you ever wanted to know about gear here. His reviews are in depth, and lots of folks respect what he has to say.

• Magic Lantern guides (http://www.larkbooks.com/mlg) – Not quite as good as Thom Hogan IMO but still very good, and available for more cameras. I have both guides for the d700 and I like them both for different reasons. Its nice to be able to flip through an actual book sometimes.

• lynda.com – tutorial videos. I don’t know that I would have purchased this, but we have subscriptions where I work and I’ve found the tutorial videos to be very well done. The great thing is that they break it down into small 5-15 minute chunks so you can hit a few up when you have time without having to commit to an hour long session. They have courseware on *everything* and their catalog is quite deep.

• safaribooksonline.com – books online. I have a subscription to this because I use it for my day job all the time, but they also have an amazing selection of digital photography books and books on the software you will be using. Fantastic resource, but spendy.

• dpreview.com – gear review site. Love the reviews, but you can skip the message boards. They are full of people who think they know more than they do and like to argue with one another in a counterproductive manner. Separating the wheat from the chaff in there is not worth your time with so many other great resources out there. Its really best suited to people buying point and shoots, but I have to mention it because they are very thorough about their technical reviews.

Acknowledgements

These folks have assisted me greatly …Thanks for enduring all my wacky questions, making great suggestions on how to improve, and inspiring me to do it in the first place:

Ben Slayter – http://www.slaytercreative.com/
Stefan Falke – http://www.stefanfalke.com/
Dino Perrucci – http://dinoperrucciphotography.blogspot.com/

A very special thanks to the Bowery Presents folks for giving me a chance to learn by doing, and the opportunity to shoot some excellent music in the process. (http://www.bowerypresents.com) ​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

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Grace Potter and the Nocturnals – Terminal 5