We just wanted to send a quick note to everyone who came out last night. Thank you for making the event a success and we are looking forward to the next one.
Thank you to our photographer, Roman Castro (@romancastro) who captured some great shots. The photos are already up on Facebook, so go tag yourselves: http://on.fb.me/hTaBX5
We wanted to show our gratitude for the venue, RA Sushi (@RASushiSanDiego). They kept the happy hour flowing all night and shared some of their tasty bites with our group. Hat tip to Rob (@downtownrob) for lending us his Mingle Stram tweet wall.
And a very special thanks also goes out to the folks NBC San Diego (@nbcsandiego), who are consistent supporters of our group and what we do.
Last but not least, the organizing crew Katie (@lajollamom) and Keith (@keithbooe) deserve huge props. These folks embody the blogging spirit and they are reason the event went off without a hitch.
The next meetup is already in the works. Stay tuned to our meetup page for more details.
Sugar Jones got a chance to speak to an NBC film crew that came out to talk to a few of our bloggers at our last meetup. During the video Sugar talks about putting the real work into blogging usually comes when no one is reading your blog. It’s easy to look at a blog at maturity and say, “I’d like to do something like that.” But many people don’t realize 1,000s of hours and sometimes years of effort went into creating the ‘finished’ product.
We’ve all agonized over our avatars. Having a tiny 49×49 square represent our online identity can be daunting no matter what your level of vanity. This week’s guest post comes from Roman Castro, SDBloggers official event photographer. Roman shares with us some dos and don’ts of profile shots, and how to create a winner. Moreover, Roman is offering his services *free* to 5 lucky people, fast forward to the end of the post to get the details.
Meanwhile, if you’re intent on creating your own profile shot, here are a few tips from Roman you ought to consider before you update your profile pic.
###
Don’ts:
Have a old style backdrop. It looks dated.
Crop your group party picture. Looks odd and the resolution will be too low
Have a busy background, it distracts from your face.
Have an extreme angle. Too low is intimidating, too high is too weak. Should be at eye level.
Photograph in direct sunlight. It will create hard shadows.
Dos:
Keep it simple.
Choose a solid background. No patterns.
Use off camera lighting or photograph in the shade.
Clean up. Shave and fix your hair unless you are going for the hipster look.
As a special promotional offer for SDBloggers members, I will do free web profile portrait for the first 5 members to comment on this post and show up to the next meetup. The session will be held an hour before the start of the upcoming event at RA Sushi (6:30pm). Profile Sessions are normally $50, but as a special offer I have reduced this to $20 during any SDBloggers meetup and $40 if you want to book at another time and location in and around San Diego. The images are delivered to you in digital form and will not be watermarked.
###
You can learn more about Roman Castro photography by visiting his author page or following him on Twitter.
