Vacations Photos - The Results

Well, we made it back from our vacation - 3,500+ km later!! From here to Williams Lake, with side trips to Big Lake and Springhouse, a day trip to Barkerville. Then on to Summerland and finally to Fruitvale, with a day trip to Nelson, Castlegar and back to Fruitvale. All, in all, a whole lot of kilometers under our belts.

I have just finished loading all the photos on to my computer - actually managed to fill the memory on my 2 GB card for the first time - ended up with 652 photos from our vacation (not counting the ones that got deleted along the way). I am happy with most of them - can't imagine how many layouts I will need to do to do justice to even half that number of photos - but I learned a whole lot about my camera and also realized how much more I have to learn.

In the end, we captured the memories of our trip - the highs and the lows and now we just have to recover from all that travelling.

No matter how much I love getting away, I think that I love coming home more....


Here are some of my favourite pictures:


A close up of my son at the pool.









My hubby and friend, bracketed between the beach towels hanging on the line. They were watching some of the 'tame' deer roam through their property.






One of the close up macro shots that I wanted to get.



Interesting texture of the old wheel and the bright green foliage.

I was quite impressed by what the camera was able to capture in the fading light as dusk fell over Big Lake, BC. Not the best photo for clarity (I forgot my tripod), but the colours are amazing.







This is one of my all time favs - the glow of the fire with the marshmallows roasting - the camera was able to completely stop the motion of the fire and focus sharply at the same time.







I can hardly wait to start scrapping all of the hundreds of photos......

Vacation Photos

I have had my camera out a lot this vacation! Much to my eldest son's dismay - "Mom!! Turn that thing off!!!" Gotta capture all the fun!

I finally got a chance to view the photos yesterday on a screen larger than my camera and I was pleased with most of them. I have been really happy how my new camera is working with some of the night shots that I managed to get of the amazing moon rises we have been experiencing.

We visited Barkerville and spent the afternoon wandering through all the old buildings - and, of course, sampling some of the baked goods from the little bakery operating in the town. I made sure to take some of the close up, macro-type shots of some of the more interesting textures from around the town. Most turned out OK, but I can see that I still need to learn more about my camera.

We are now at my brother-in-laws in the Kootenays - more chances to get more photos!

Vacation Time!

It is almost vacation time again!! We will be hitting the road on Saturday morning - heading into the interior to visit family and friends. My new camera will be right there beside me - hoping to capture some great photos of wildlife and fun.

I will try to remember to include some of the interesting 'art' type photos, along with the family ones too. You know - the close up photos of interesting objects along the way - not just the kids standing in front of the sign, the kids standing in front of the car, the kids standing in front of [insert object name]!

We will be visiting places that we have been before, but I want to try to make sure we don't end up with the very same type of photos we had before. I like to keep my scrapbooks interesting, so I want to start with my photos!

Scrapbooking Classes

Upcoming scrapbooking classes that I will be teaching:

On Tuesday evenings in August, from 6:30 - 8:30 at Michael's in Port Coquitlam, I will be teaching either Beginner Tips & Techniques or Laced Accordian Books. Check with the store to see which one on which night.

On August 19th at 11:00 a.m at Michael's, I will be teaching a 1-hour kids scrapbooking class. I just finished the prototype last night and I am really pleased with how it turned out. This is a small cardstock album that kids can easily make to keep their own pictures in, using rings to do the binding. The class only covers having six pages, but you could add a few more.

Starting in September, I will also be teaching at Remember Me (my favourite local scrapbooking store). Dates, times and topics to be finalized. Please talk to the ladies at the store to see all the upcoming classes.

I will add to this information, once I have more things finalized.

Lost Photos Found - The Next Step

Well, now that I have gotten over the shock of finding so many pictures that had been misplaced, I have started to add them into my scrapbooks.

This is definately one of the times that I think that the pocket albums have it over the CM albums - but I love the CM albums!

I have lifted a couple of my pages - thank goodness for "Undo" - if you don't have a bottle of this magic 'potion' you should definately invest in it. I have been able to lift photos, stickers - as a matter of fact, whole pages with little to no damage to any of the elements - and the stickers are still usable afterwards!!

So far, I have done about 25 pages of the missing pictures and I am not even 1/3 of the way through all of them. The 30+ envelopes of pictures covered many different events.

I am off to "77-in-07" tonight, so I will be able to log another whole batch of pages!!

Lost Photos Found

My dear hubby happened to mention the other day "Did you know that there is a box of photos in the wardrobe downstairs?".

Now, I knew that I had photos for certain events that I could not find in the box of photos that I had at hand, but I thought it was only one or two different things. I dug out the box that he mentioned, only to find probably 30+ envelopes of photos!! I had thought that I was almost caught up on all my film-based photos - almost ready to step into the digital-age photos! I think that I will have to insert a whole new album in the middle of my other albums to accommodate all the extra pictures. These box of photos must have been moved around due to a flood that we had a couple of years ago and ended up in a wardrobe downstairs - that is the only explanation that I can think of as to their location.

I have spent the better part of the last week organizing all these 'found' photos. As my albums are chronological, it will mean a great deal of work to insert the pictures in fairly close proximity to their original order. Luckily, I had left some room for the ones that I knew I was missing - but as I underestimated the amount - not enough room!! This is the time that I sort of wish that I used pocket albums instead of Creative Memories albums. I wouldn't change for the world as I love the albums, but it would make this job a whole lot easier.

One good thing - I had thought that I was not a very good mom for my second son as I hardly had any pictures of him - typical of the second child I know, but as I often (even before becoming a scrapbooker) had a camera in hand - odd for me. Now I know what happened - most of the pictures feature my youngest as a toddler - he will be happier now and not accuse me of loving his brother more than him.

I am off to scrapping at Remember Me this evening for their 'Free-4-All' Friday night crop - maybe I can get a few layouts done....

New Digital Camera

I have recently purchased a new digital camera. I looked at a number of different models - DSLR or Fixed Lens - Super-Zoom or Standard. There are so many makes and models it was very hard to decide.

After thinking about it for a while, I decided that as I normally put a large zoom lens on my SLR-type cameras and very seldom change them, I might as well choose a good fixed lens type that had the zoom capabilities that I was interested in. (I like being able to stand back and use the zoom to get the close-ups without having the camera stuck in someone's face.)

I looked at all the major players in the super-zoom class of fixed lens cameras: Olympus, Canon, Panasonic and Fujifilm.

One of the things that I decided right off the bat was that I did not want to be tied to a battery pack - I would rather carry extra batteries if my rechargeables ran out than end up with a dead battery pack just at the start of a photo shoot. This ruled out the Panasonic models.

The Olympus at the biggest zoom - 18x, 10 pixels, image stabilization and top ISO of 800.
The Canon S3 IS had a zoom of about 16x, 6.0 pixels, image stabilization and top ISO also of 800.
The Fujifilm S6000fd/S6500fd - 10.75x zoom, 6.0 pixels, and the best ISO of the three at 3,200 (this model does not have IS, but with the useable ISO speed of up to 3,200 - this stops almost any motion and gives a sharp picture).

One of the best resources I found for making my decision was the DPReview website - this is an independent testing organization for digital photography. I was able to review all the makes/models that I was interested in to get reviews that were not tied to commission. This was a big help.

I checked with a number of different retails, but the best help from the most knowledgeable sales person was Oliver at PhotoExpress in Maple Ridge (besides being a great scrapbooking store). He is very familiar with all the current market models. He has used and tested all of the ones that I was looking at buying.

I ended up with the Fujifilm S6000fd and have been very happily playing with all the bells and whistles on this model. As it happens, my last digital camera was also a Fujifilm - this did not particularily sway my decision as I was completely ready to change brands.

I am looking forward to scrapbooking with the new pictures that I will be taking on my new camera!

Happy snapping!