2023-05-29 Memorial Day

 

Tammy and I checked out some of the walking paths in town today. It was warm but plenty of folks were also enjoying the outdoors. At the end of our trek we met this gentleman carrying our flag, a fitting end to our outing on this special day.  Pictures   Video

2023-05-28 Celebrating Jordan's Birthday

 

Jordan arrived from Austin for his birthday, visiting friends and family. We enjoyed Tex-Mex at Los Cucos before a few gifts were opened and we had this delicious cake. His visit was just too short!  Pictures  Video

 Hobbies

Over the years I've picked up numerous hobbies of which photography has been number one on the list since childhood. I don't know why the old Brownie camera and photographs were so interesting even as a 7 year old child but I loved them. Even later on in life it was always fun to look through the pictures tucked into a large box mom kept on the living room floor next to a chair and we shuffled through them often while commenting and looking on the backs for clues to what the image had captured. It was a bit of history and memories of so many times and occasions that would be forgotten without those prints.

For me it was a progression of using affordable cameras and sending in the rolls of film to be developed while eagerly awaiting the unknown quality shots taken during the times presented to me in life. Often the roll of 12 or 24 pictures would return few good pictures that captured the moment without blurred or incorrectly exposed elements. These were not inexpensive prints once the film, developing, and postage added up, but not as expensive as the Polaroid instant camera photos. But getting a picture right away was worth the cost.

As I could afford it the movie film became important to me along with the photos. Motion just captured so much more of many occasions, even without sound using my Super 8 movie camera. And the quality was grainy at best. A three and a half minute cartridge was used sparingly for special purposes at first, but I have no idea how many hours I accumulated. Many many hours.  Even with the super bright flood light I managed to get people to act somewhat natural, albeit with a squint.

Technology played a big role in the quality of my photography as cameras did more automatic functions to get the focus and lighting set properly.  Higher speed and resolutions made it possible to get some shots that before were impossible.  And eventually digital photography in both photos and movies meant storage and editing were becoming something less challenging. But even as the storage capacities got larger it was limiting to keep everything in one place and required lots of tape, disks, hard drives, and memory to attempt a way for future retrieval.  And to share these collections of birthdays, holidays, and special events with others was changing all the time.

 

As things progressed I found a way to share CDs and DVDs with family and friends that could play on computers at first, then in DVD players later, but the dyes used for home disk creations could be problematic and heat would cause them to become unreadable in some players. It was crude at first and no real solution for the dye problem ever was completely resolved no matter how good the disk being used. Then came the internet with some storage capability to share media if I had the time to wait for files to upload to a website.

 

Photography websites became numerous and at first seemed they would be in existence forever and make it worth the effort.  This proved incorrect as many sites either have shut down or began charging for their use. YouTube was available for video but limited in the size of the upload file.  Plus it took a lengthy time to upload each file.  Resolution was low and and therefore the quality playback was not great either. Plus every video needed titling and editing.  I became aware as the resolution got better that my video and photos could be edited together like a slide show in chronological order and this seemed like the easiest way to share both content in one slide show like viewing. It was still early on and uploads were limited as file sizes grew much larger and meant even longer upload time was needed.

 

Now it was time to digitize all the photos and prepare the video events with pictures and music to allow uploading. This turned into 8 or 9 years of part time preparation. Then my internet service increased my upload speed double from before and with no limit to how many videos or size that I could upload it was rather easy, if not still time consuming, to put the files in my YouTube sites where links could find them.  This worked well for some of the occasions' videos but until I indexed the albums and videos there was no easy way anyone could stream the content. Thankfully that index is now in place with a link here on this page's column where family and friends can see their relatives and occasions anytime they wish.

This index has been an evolution made possible by this blog. Going through posts and correcting bad links to sites no longer in service was a first step in organizing and providing the data I needed to complete the project. And I figured since there were no posts prior to October 2005 I would create links to previous video and albums as I uploaded that media going back to the 60's. That addition has added lots of index content, and there is still work to be done. But it is all part of the hobby that I consider well worth the effort to archive and keep this treasure of memories in a place I hope will be more permanent and available to those of us in need of a priceless memory at times.  

Meanwhile I have other hobbies in work to likewise keep me occupied, but photography will always be first on the list.

2023-05-13 Celebrating Mother's Day (14th)

 

We celebrated Mother's Day a day early while Tim and Angela could bring Tammy's mom, Marcielle to have lunch and visit. Tammy made Jambalaya and coconut cake for dessert. Yummy.  Photo Album  Video