Day 2 of my self-improvement project

What did I learn from the first day? Well, I learned that focusing is hard! I also learned that I need to say a tiny bit more about each shot, so that I can truly learn and not repeat the same mistakes over and over.

I have been thinking a lot about this project over the last 24 hours, and I think I have some good ideas: working with flash, figuring out the best use of the remote, enlisting help from friends, using the Coolpix P6000 on occasion, etc. etc. It should be fun. I need to keep this to a reasonable time limit, or I will not be able to continue.

Here is Day 2's photo. Click on the image to get the full-size photo:



Here are the particulars for today:

• Aperture priority at f/4.5 (I didn't want to use flash today, so I made the aperture larger to let in more light) with an automatic shutter speed of 1/10s and an ISO of 200.
  
• I used Matrix Metering again, with a 0 EV dialed in. This time I got the exposure better (than yesterday's shot).
• I used Auto WB again today, but this time I took a preliminary shot using a digital gray card (which I then used to set the WB in the software).
  
• Picture Control was again D2XMODE1.
  
• My Nikon D300 was mounted on my tripod vertically and again I used a remote release. I had my 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 lens on the camera with a focal length of 20 mm.
• I tried a couple of different focus settings (I took a total of 6 photos of myself before I got this last one that was in focus), finally ending up AF-Area Mode of Auto.
• Then I uploaded the WB shot and the portrait into Capture NX2. I got the WB set and then transferred it to the portrait, which pretty significantly warmed up the photo.
• The only other things I did with it--because I got the exposure correct this time--was add sharpening, crop, and save it as a JPEG. That's it. It took me longer to open NX2 than it did to edit the photo.