Photo Tips from around the web and Camera Dilemma

If there is one thing I notice from the best blogs out there, it is fabulous photos. You will notice this missing from my blog! Last night I spent time looking though some of my favorite blogs and other websites for photo tips. If you have any, please send them on! It is obvious that I need help. My biggest issue I have with taking photos is that most of them are done at night. I work full time and have other activities, so most of my project photos are taken in the evenings. Right now in winter it gets dark at 6 pm so all of my photos have no natural light. By summer the light will be better, but I knew I had to figure out a way to get better at least for now. I am trying to plan more so that photos are taken on the weekend for posts during the week, but with projects that is not always possible.

Some of the sites I am looking at:

Bower Power

Centsational Girl

Pioneer Woman

For editing, right now I am using Picasa that Centsational Girl  tipped me on to. It is FA-REE from Google and allows you to crop, edit, paste words, and create colleges like this

Holiday collage:

And like this from my trip to Palau:

I was a point and shoot kind of girl – easy setting with a flash or no flash. That meant that it was hit and miss on the light and picture quality. Thanks to this post from Centsational Girl  I actually dug out the manual and discovered the camera had more settings than I am aware of! ISO, light settings, and smile detected oh my! It really comes down to is understanding my camera like Centsational Girl posted about. Who knew my camera had more than one setting?

Now for the dilemma part….what new camera to get? I know I need to upgrade from a point and click type and use (gasp) lenses! I need my first DSLR! Nikon or Canon? What level? Here are a few I am looking at, let me know your thoughts! I worry about not buying enough camera and they are so pricey I do not want to buy another one soo! Right now the Nikon D3100 is the front runner but I wonder if it will be able to do what I want it to do later, but seems to be best for the price?

Nikon 3100

Nikon D90

Nikon 7000 (pricey, but will this do all I want to do??)

Canon EOC Rebel T2I