The Nascar race was nostalgic for me as it marked one year since I first purchased my Canon Rebel XTi. I didn’t have this blog back then but I decided to take a trip down memory lane and list the top 5 things I think have helped in improving my photography skills:

5. I’m constantly trying to learn new things. The web is your friend, there are hundreds of tutorials that can help you learn whether you don’t know – all for FREE. Right now – I’m trying to learn photoshop lightroom, we’ll see how quickly I master it.

4. Following other photographer’s work. I counted up and I have 29 different photographer blogs that I follow in my RSS feeder. Granted I don’t look at everyone’s everyday but they give me ideas and more importantly inspire me.

3. I started shooting in RAW immediately. I was very surprised today see the pictures from my first weekend with my camera in RAW. For those that want to get better at photography and if your camera is capable then DO IT. No it won’t make you a rock star photographer instantly but it’s easier to fix mistakes after the fact. Granted I’d rather have my pictures perfect right from the camera but at least I can make it look like they were.

2. From the get go I’ve only shot in manual mode. Granted it shows with my first several month’s worth of pictures because it would take a lot of trying bad shots before I got the shot right. I think it’s paid off though now because I can quickly switch between settings on my camera and although it may not be the perfect settings with the first shot it’s usually pretty close to what I want.

1. Starting this blog – at first it was REALLY difficult to find new things to take pictures of or focus on new things even though I loved my new toy. Having the blog keeps me accountable to take more pictures – especially when I know others are looking at it.

OK that’s it for now, thanks for the quick trip down memory lane. We’ll see how my work looks in another year. Sorry for the long book, I know no one comes to this site expecting to read Here are some shots I took at last year’s Nascar race.