photography

 Let's have a quick jump across Europe.

Paris:

Brussles:

Bruges:

Berlin:

Prague:

Vienna:

Budapest:

Zagreb:

Sarajevo:

Belgrade:

Sofia:

 The last couple of days we've been enjoying the spectacular sights at Angkor Wat and the surrounding temples. We saw 28 temples in 3 days, and each one was unique and interesting (well, except for the last one). The temples are grandiose reminders of an era which was consumed by the jungle hundreds of years ago. And while their beauty and craftmanship are impressive, we think they are improved by our photogenic faces. 

Jordan caputres the Bayon at Sunrise. We were all alone at one of the parks most visited sites.

Jordan conquers Angkor Wat.

I stop for a read in a photo that I promise is real, despite the fact that it doesn't look like it.

If you're interested in the rest of our photos, we're slowly uploading them. Check them out here: Day 0, Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3, or our Top 10 (which is a work in progress). Sometimes we're not even in the picture.

After arriving in Taipei and spending a few days looking around, it became apparent that we really aren't a one camera family anymore. Often I'm happy to let Jordan take the pictures, but after a while of standing around while he takes lots, and lots, of pictures, I decided I would really rather have my own camera. So Jordan got to buy a new fancy one, and now I get the old one all to myself. I'm excited to try and remember all those things I learned in photography class back in high school. But the scary thing is that when I had that class, we learned on actual film. We spent half the class learning to develop our own photos. I remember thinking it was unlikely I would ever use that skill because, really, who has their own darkroom? Well it turns out I do, and it's called Photoshop. 

Perhaps the best part of this deal was that I no longer have to process the hundreds of photos Jordan takes; he's in charge of them himself. Leaving me more time to do fun things like scrapbook and post on the blog.

There are a few people amongst our readership who use us as their technology advisors.  If you are such a person, this entry might be of interest to you.  If you are interested in our goings and comings, then this may not be so thrilling.

I recently uploaded all our digital pictures to Flickr.com.  You may have noticed that we use Flickr to host our Korea pictures, and you may be wondering why we have put them all there, as if you really wanted to look at that many pictures.

The truth is we did not upload them so you could look at them, but as a means of storage for ourselves.  Unlike sites like Facebook, which compress your photos when you upload them, Flickr saves the actual photo, giant size and all.  For $25 a year, Flickr gives us as much space as we can use (if you were to ask Jordan about this he would say, "it's a good deal").  So we no longer have to backup our photos on our external harddrive.  They are in fact safer on Flickr, since they are about triple backed up on Flickr's servers (and Flickr is owned by Yahoo!) and you can't drop the internet or spill water on it. 

The other main reason we put them on Flickr was to organize them.  Think about how many pictures you have.  Now think about how many pictures you'll have in 20 years.  How will you find that one picture of me eating ice cream in San Francisco?  The answer is: Flickr.  Flickr gives you the best options for organizing and searching your pictures.  There are a few offline programs that give similar options, but these can be frustrating to use because they utilize so much memory that they slow your computer down.  And if your computer crashes, or you get a new one, you might lose all the organization you've done, if not the actual pictures. 

So that's why we use Flickr.  If you want to know how we use Flickr, you can watch this movie.  I made it, and apparently I had a lot to say because it's really long.  I found Flickr tricky to use when I was starting out, and so perhaps explain more than you need to know.  I have made friends with it though, and once you go through the initial work of loading your old pictures, it will take very little work to maintain as long as you add your pictures as you take them. 

Needless to say, we highly recommend this solution if you take more than 100 pictures a year.  Because 100 pictures times 20 years is 2000 pictures.  And who only takes 100 pictures a year?