A few years back my wife and I got a few empty shoes boxes and labeled them for our kids, friends and family and went through boxes of photos. We filled them with pictures related “only” to them and gave them the boxes to do whatever with. At least 90% of all loose photos have been given away.

I used GIMP about a month ago and primarily relied on Youtube tutorials, but the problem I ran into was the software version on Youtube was not the one I downloaded and it was frustrating trying to follow Youtube, so if you do make sure it’s the same version so you’re using apples with apples.
All I wanted to do was to cut out my grandson from one picture and place him on the crosswalk along with George, Paul, Ringo and John from the Abbey Road album. Without any exaggeration I spent two days probably about six hours trying without success to accomplish my goal, then the same week I sat down for almost twelve hours straight until I finally figured to out and got it to my liking.
There are so many drop down menus it’s unbelievable! It works but a huge learning curve.
Here’s the final picture which I sent to Shutterfly and blew up and framed, it was a success, he loved it!

If you travel south to the Berkshires, Stockbridge/Essex area around Columbus Day, Oct. 11 th it should be at or near peek!

We just went through the process of deciding which lens to get for my wife. She uses glasses for reading and watching TV, I researched the Pan Optix made by Alcon which gives you close-up, intermediate and far distance vision and has a 99% satisfaction rating on the internet. Our doctor told us the reason for the cataract surgery is to remove the cataracts, and everyone's eyes are different so you may or may not need to continue to wear glasses afterwards. The lenses are expensive and not covered by insurance, but we figured it's her eyes and luckily we could afford the upgrade and she's happy she did. Good luck to you.

I personally like to take pictures of trees or I’ll purposely just catch a part of a tree/bush in the corner of a photograph just to show depth of field. My daughter had a dead tree on her property looking kind of shabby and they were going away for the week-end and I asked if I could do something with it not knowing at the time exactly what I would do. So after about a 6 hour day and a chainsaw this is what was hiding in the dead tree again a great reason to take a picture of a tree.

I’ve read whatever I could find to see if “after” I take a picture can I then change the format from “picture effect” off to watercolor or b & w. I know that I can set the picture effect before I shoot to get desired effect but don’t know if I can do it after.

As we’ve all heard many many times before “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”, that being said I do feel that it’s more the photographer than the equipment. If two people have the identical equipment and know how to use it and shoot the same subject matter, you’ll get two really different pictures usually one a much better capture than the other. But there again the end result is subjective.

If we are lucky maybe they’ll all learn the “words” instead of humming!!

In my experience the “browser” makes a difference. I use “Google Chrome” and it seems to work better than other browsers.

I’ve gotten the “blur” when taking pictures in the Rainforest from extreme moisture trapped inside lens. Also on occasion when going from a warm house to take a picture outside where it’s very cold, but I could see the moisture or condensation by looking at the lens.

I love the A6300, menu takes awhile to get used to, but if you already bought it, then it may or may not fit your hand grip ? For me it’s a little small so I purchased a hand grip which makes it feel so much more comfortable and secure!

Beautiful picture!!

I saw the Chihuly exhibit awhile ago at the New York Botanical Gardens, half of the pieces were indoors and half outdoors. There were no restrictions that I was made aware of but am sure it varies from exhibit to exhibit. I saw it in the daytime, such an amazing exhibit it™ is hard to take a bad picture!

I have many coffee table books, choose the best pictures for the books. I use Shutterfly, they are always having sales, therefore you can open an account and “save” your project until they offer a sale and then submit your book for print. Also we went to Italy and took about 1,500 pictures so I used Windows Movie Maker and and organized them in the order of our trip and made a slide show with text to which I added a sound tract. I burned the movie to CD and when our guest come over I play it with the music and we watch casually as it plays on the TV. I also put it on YouTube, but due to copywriting they took the audio music tract off the video, so just the video is on youtube. On YouTube search under “Portrait of Italy by Jordan”, you can always add your own music while watching it. I used Andrea Bocelli which made you feel like you were in Italy!!!!!

“The Swedish Art of Death Cleaning” is a book available through Amazon, but in short either you clean up after yourself or your kids or relatives will have to do it for you after you pass!!! So my wife and I (in our seventies) have started the process as time permits. A few months ago I went through all my old record albums and kept what I wanted and gave away 250 albums, the same with all our boxes and boxes for photographs. We took empty shoe boxes and over one or two nights sat down and labeled each box by family and friends names and put the photos into each box according to who was in the picture then gave them their box of pictures to keep. This way we know that everyone got their pictures and we keep what we wanted, but at least they weren’t tossed in the garbage down the road. As with all my digital photos who knows? Probably put them on an external drive and if the kids want some it’s their choice.