As to photography advice, a great place to dig in a bit is the Digital Photography Review – DPReview.com. The forum community there has always been very knowledgeable and glad to help with particular questions (if a search of the forum doesn’t turn up an answer), and the front page is a great source of photography news.

Of course lighting is a huge part of photography, and one of the most helpful sites I’ve come across on lighting is a really great blog called Strobist:

strobist.blogspot.com/2006/03/lighting-101.html

…and be sure to look for the Lighting 101 and Lighting 102 archives if you’re wanting to study up.

Nikon is just coming out with the D90 – a great little DSLR that has pretty much the same sensor as the D300 and also shoots video (first in its class to do this). I’ll probably end up getting one at some point as a second camera for events. It can be purchased in a kit with a nice 18-105mm lense (for about $1,200), or body only for about 1,000 USD. On the other hand, others who’ve advised here not to spend much money on a body – unless you plan to spend a lot of time shooting to make the severe depreciation worth it – are wise. The same goes for the Nikon vs Canon comments so far. I picked up a D40 a few months back for use as a second camera, and it comes with a “starter” lense for about 500 USD.

One lense I’ve really enjoyed working with is Nikon’s 18-200. In one lense, you have everything from wide angle to telephoto which avoids having to carry multiple lenses around and switch them back and forth and possibly getting dust inside your camera body. There are plenty of other specialized lenses, but this one is a great start for general use and as a “walk about” lense. It used to be impossible to get your hands on one of these – they were selling like hot-cakes for quite a while after they first came out, but now you can get one from a reputable dealer (check pricescan.com) for about 750 USD including shipping (and I think Abe’s of Maine is good as well and they sell it for 655 shipped).

I was with the guys from Bedouins Int’l who actually know Daley, too…and I got a photoshoot out of the weekend, too.
Funny that we had that going on at the same time.

ok, I’m in the middle of VJ-ing and we’re about to do another song (the invitation is going on right now…shhhh)

~ proctor