Photos--Finally!!!

Finally a start at the photos I promised. Took me long enough to get started with the scanning. You really should see the amount of photos I have been going through the past couple of weeks. Sorting out the ones I want to scan and get put here has been fun, but getting to the scanning has been another story.

All of the pictures below were taken in Central Michigan from 1992-1993 using my Canon AE1 camera. I also used my zoom/macro lens for most of my photos with this camera.

I hope you enjoy them.

The buds above and the daffodils below were taken in my yard.

These lake pictures were taken at Tamarac Lake. The ducks were always available for viewing.

The following photos were taken at the Muskegon River near a little town called Rodgers, Michigan. This town isn't much more than a few homes and a couple of stores. If you blink as you drive past, you won't even notice it. We found this pretty spot one day and let the kids go swimming in the river. It was the first time they had ever swam in a river and they said it was really cold. But they had fun. While they swam, I had fun taking pictures.

These last two were two of my favorite photos.

Both still at the river.

Michigan has such beautiful landscape. Sometime I hope to get back up there just for a photo/road trip. For now, I have my pictures.

Sorting Photos

Oh my goodness! I have a ton of photos that I have been going through this weekend. I even have a bit of a stack sitting here next to my mouse ready to be scanned this week so I can use them on here and other places. My daughter got me 3 photo storage boxes and I started the job yesterday and worked at it almost all day until just before I went to bed at 1:30 this morning! All three boxes are just about as full as you can get them and I have more to sort yet. That is, just tossing the pictures into the boxes haphazardly without any bit of organization. All I have done so far is select an almost random date to start with which is 1977. The reason I selected that date is because that was when I left home for college and lived away from home for the first real time in my life. So, I have one box of all the photos, no matter what they are, from pre-1977. Then I have a box of all family and I and the homes we lived in after 1977, which in this box I included all extended family as well. The third box is everything else which includes friends, landscapes, nature, hot air balloons, all our pets, and much more. The next step I suppose is to figure out how to sort each box individually, and see if they will actually fit once they are standing up. Only one of the boxes has any kind of dividers. The other two don't so if I want them I will have to see if I can buy them somewhere, or else I will have to make them myself. My living room around my chair is a real mess. All the negatives are still in the packets they came in so I can hopefully find it easier to identify them. I am not sure at all how to deal with the negatives and get them safely organized and stored. Right now all those packets and some loose negatives are lying in a sloppy pile on the floor beside the photo box. I am looking forward to getting this project finished so I can get my room cleaned up again. I am also looking forward to getting some of my favorite photos onto this blog.
After I had been going through the pictures for awhile, I decided I should start doing some scrapbooking...just because I know I could do at least a page or two focused on my different hair styles and colors through the years! Oh what a funny site some of those were to see again! Of course, I could actually do something like that with all the pictures of my family members...just watching the changes...especially of the kids. Well, that might just be another project down the road a ways. Too much to do right now with just organizing these photos first.

Fun Photo Sites

http://www.randomchicken.com/ This one isn't really funny. But as was said on About.com about this site...the funny thing could be just how many times you refresh your browser to see what the next chicken will be.

http://www.tensionnot.com/funny_pictures_1.html There are hundreds of funny and interesting photos at this site. Supposed to be G-rated. I didn't check through them all. Not enough time in a day for that.

http://www.funforever.net/archives/category/art/photography/ Another photography blog. Had to include these ice pictures. Amazing.

http://www.christinefarah.com/index2.php Nice website...Cool photos.

http://fun.familyeducation.com/page/39458.html Photography for family fun.

http://www.aarpmagazine.org/lifestyle/digital_photo.html Cool photography ideas...forget that it is from AARP...age has nothing to do with it.

http://www.nelsontan.com/reviews/seagull.html Some new ideas for an old form.

http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=10075&pq-locale=en_US Ideas for photography for scrapbooking.

http://www.photosecrets.com/tips.html Can you make money with photography? Here are some ideas.

http://www.nyip.com/ezine New York Institute of Photography's Ezine.

http://www.photoworks.com/community/feature.jsp?tab=communities PhotoWorks photo communities.

Check This Out!

Check out this photographer website and blog. Enjoy!

http://www.butzi.net/

Video Uploading

Well, the closest thing I have to a solution, even though it is just temporary and not even a great solution, is to use Photobucket to upload my videos. Without a paid membership I have limits as to the size of the videos I can upload. Even with paid membership, I have a limit, although it is a bit larger. At least I can share most of my videos with the people I want to share them with for now.
Uploading to Photobucket takes a lot of time...on DSL...even a video of just a few seconds takes several minutes to upload. The free membership allows up to 100MB or 5 minute videos to be uploaded. I had several that were 70 or 80 or 90 MB, and they took up to half an hour to upload for each one. The ones that I did not upload due to length probably would have taken an hour each.
I did find that I could download from Photobucket to Real Player. The videos were converted on Photobucket to .flv files. I could not burn the videos from Real Player to CD, however, which disappointed me. All I want to do with these videos is to be able to burn them with full video and audio to CD or DVD so that I can give them to their parents, grandparents, etc. and have them be able to watch the videos on their own computers. But when I tried to burn them from Real Player I got an error message saying that the CD I was using was "read only", which is the same message I got when I tried to burn the original .mov videos.