What I Learned This Week

So much for my post being up at 9am, huh?  Well, at any rate, here I am! This week I learned so much that I can’t begin to put it all in one post, but here are the highlights.

1. I learned the difference between earned media and paid media. Are your eyes glossing over already?  Well stick with me here.

Earned media is when you promote products without compensation, for example, when you mention a product that you love on your blog.

Paid media is when you receive compensation for promoting a product or brand.  An example of paid media is a blogger becoming a spokesperson for a brand, or if a blogger creates content (posts or videos) for a company’s website.

As the lovely and brilliant Nancy of iRobot explained in the Blissdom session on moving from earned media to paid media, “If I’m paying you, it’s my message you’re putting out.  With earned media, you can say whatever you want.   It’s valuable to have both.”

2.  Thanks to the wisdom workshop on Photography, I learned to take my camera off the Auto setting, and now I’m shooting almost exclusively on the aperture priority mode. I feel so fancy!

Here’s the lowdown.  You know those gorgeous artsy portrait shots where the person is in focus and the background is blurry?  Set your aperture on the lowest number – it’s around 4.0 with my lens, but it can be less.  That is a low F-stop.  That means there is a lot of light coming into the lens, and for some reason, that blurs out the background.  Or it blurs whatever part of the photo you aren’t focusing on.  It has to do with depth of field, but that’s where I get lost, so just remember blurry background – low aperture.  Here is an example of a photo I took, practicing this technique during our workshop.

If you’re taking a landscape shot or something where you want everything in the photo to be crystal clear, then set the aperture in the upper range.  It’s that simple!  Well, it’s really not, but that’s enough for today.  If you want more on that, Pioneer Woman has a fabulous series of posts on What the Heck is an Aperture?

3. I learned that when you go away on a trip and park your car at the airport, and they are calling for snow, you better have a shovel in your trunk. I did, thanks to my husband who put it there and told me I may need it.  Was he ever right about that!  I got back to my car, and the guy driving the shuttle plopped my bags in the snow drift that surrounded my car and left me standing there in my 2-inch heeled boots (thankfully I had on boots!) and my cell phone in my hand.  Of course I took a picture to TwitPic before I started shoveling. I am a blogger, after all!

4. I learned that when a man drives by in a 4×4 and asks you if you need help, don’t act all confident and tell him you are just fine unless you really mean it.  Because he may wish you good luck and drive off.

(I really was fine, and it would have been pretty awkward to sit there while he shoveled out my car so I didn’t mind too much doing it myself.  And after dragging my workout gear to Nashville and never taking it out the suitcase, the exercise actually felt good.  I only wish someone had been there to take a picture of me in my sassy boots and pea coat shoveling out my car.  I am woman, hear me roar!)

5. I learned that I better not lay down with my daughter to get her to sleep when I’ve had a total of about 10 hours of sleep in 5 days unless I’m ready to go to sleep for the night. I laid down last night at 8PM and woke up at 7AM this morning.  It was glorious.  And the best part was, I woke up to this:

6. I learned so much more this week, but it’s getting late and I have miles to go before I sleep.

Oh wait! I have one more.  Ahem…

7. I learned that I’d better check the number on the door of the room I’m trying to enter before calling security to let me in because “my key got deactivated again.”  It might just be the wrong room.  Yeah.  I KNOW.

What did YOU learn this week?  You know the drill.