I’ve posted a central page with full details here.

UPDATE: Ashamed as a U of M Alumn that I mixed up my Quad and Diag terms. We’re meeting in the Diag (don’t step on the M!).

Plus, it gave me an excuse to play with the new beta of LightRoom!

We spent Thanksgiving in Florida, and I was lucky enough to break away one morning to find some shots. I need to finish the edits and I’ll put some more up soon!

Many of these sites are new to me and very informative and inspirational.

Do you have any sites that give you inspiration?

Well, we had some awesome weather for the PhotoWalk this Sunday. Thanks to Heather, John, Richard, Nathan, and Jen for coming out!

Stay tuned, we’ll definitely do this again! Several folks have already asked for the next one to be further south in Michigan… any suggestions?

Here’s a smattering of the great photos shot on the walk:

On our recent photowalk in Northville, the book “Understanding Exposure” came up. I’ve recommended this book to people over and over again, so I figured I should post an easy way to find it on Amazon.

This book explains many things in an approachable way, doesn’t bury you in details, and gave me inspiration with the photos included as examples.  It really broadened my horizons for both the terminology and a modern approach to photography topics.

I’ll put a full redux of the Photowalk up a little later here and on PhotoWalking.org.

The folks at Digital Photography School put up a more detailed review if you’re interested!

The group’s address is: www.flickr.com/groups/photowalk_mi_northville_fall2007/

Joining Flickr is free and easy if you already have a Yahoo! ID. If you don’t have a Yahoo! ID yet, the Flickr signup process will guide you through it. If you have any trouble with that part, please leave a comment.

Once you’re part of the Flickr community, simply visit my profile page on Flickr and send me FlickrMail.

We had a blast… and by using full manual control on my Canon Rebel XTI, I was able to cut out the backgrounds for these shots.

It is truly amazing to compare how well our eyes work versus a camera. In the background of most of these shots I could see his Plasma TV, bookshelves, cabinets, etc.

But throw some strong side lighting in there (bouncing in some opposite light as well) and we tricked the camera pretty good. Here’s a small smackerel of what the PhotoShop guru can then do:

• 100 ISO
• Aperture Priority
• Lens wide open

Ah, Aperture… it just feels so good to take a warm photo (read:non-grainy) with a small depth of field.

Until, of course I try to catch some action, and forget to flip my Priority to Shutter Mode (Tv). Thankfully on a sunny clear day, I have plenty of light to make my camera think it needs a small shutter time, but many shots this past weekend were “blown out” because I had too much light, I didn’t change from Aperture to Shutter Priority… doh!

From the “Doh!” Files – mind your priority dial.

Here’s a tip from the “Doh!” Files… tell your sweet multi-point AutoFocus system to only use the center focus piper when shooting, it’s HIGHLY unlikely that you need your camera to take the time to snap on all the points it can, and if you shoot like me, you’ll get your subject in focus… This didn’t strike me as obvious until I was reviewing a photo’s taken at a recent Flag Football game! Doh!

According to the almanac, it should be perfect daylight, with the sunsetting at 6:33pm and moonrise 8:05pm.

We’ll nail down the meeting place by next weekend and I’ll post info here. Hope you can make it!

Chances are you’d enjoy Photo Walking. Here’s the basic idea: we meet at 6pm at a nearby location and walk around for 2 hours taking photos of anything that strikes you as interesting, sharing tips and tricks and stories along the way.

Two fellows started this a year ago – see the beginning here. So, I’d like to invite you to a PhotoWalk in the Detroit area for the month of October, hopefully we can catch some great shots of the changing season!

Here’s a list of possible locations:

• Royal Oak (always has interesting people and places)
• Northville (both urban and nature areas)
• Kensington Park

Possible dates:

• Oct 19
• Oct 21
• Oct 26
• Oct 27
• Oct 28

You might want to bring along the following:

• Backpack / fanny-pack
• Water bottle
• Sandwich
• Extra Batteries
• Extra Memory Card (if you shoot digital)
• Tripod / Mono-pod (when it gets dark, you’ll want this)
• Camera (or two)
• Lenses (if you have an SLR)

Anyone is welcome! No agenda, just folks coming together to take photos and enjoy a walk! If you’re not interested or can’t make it, tell a friend, you’d be surprised by all those “closet photographers” out there…

Please leave a comment on the best day/location for you, we’ll be setting a hard date by this weekend and finalizing the location by the following weekend.