Archive for the 'Projects' Category

Announcing Photographic Memories

November 1, 2007 | Equipment, Interviews, Parent bloggers, Products, Projects

Cross-posted to Marketing Roadmaps

As I’ve mentioned here before, I occasionally help HP with social media projects. I’m thrilled to announce that the most recent one, Photographic Memories, went live today.

Part of the US launch of HP Photo Books, Photographic Memories is a series of interviews with mom bloggers about the photos that have captured the memories of their lives. I interviewed 23 women across the US – young moms, older moms, moms of newborns, toddlers and teens. Working moms and stay at home moms. Professional photographers and moms who simply carry a point and shoot in their pocket, just in case.

HP Photo Books are a great way to share photographic memories, and in these interviews, the moms share theirs with us. The first group of 10 interviews was posted today and the rest will follow later in the month.

A little bit more about HP Photo Books

With an HP Photo Book, you can easily create a professional quality photo book at home. Particularly cool is the innovative binding system – think of a big clip – that lets you replace or rearrange pages and add mementos like invitations, children’s artwork and so on. They are available in two sizes, 5×7 and 8.5×11, and multiple colors.

If you’d like your own Photo Book, HP is offering a 20% discount until the end of the year.

Or you can take your chances in one of the many contests and sweepstakes the women in the Photographic Memories series will be having on their blogs over the next couple months. Some contests have already happened, others are going on right now, and some will be starting next week. As I get the details, I’ll add them to the Photo Contests list in the sidebar of Snapshot Chronicles.

Later this week, I’ll be writing more about the project. For now, please enjoy the interviews.

Tags: HP Photo Books, Photographic Memories, photography, mommy bloggers

Applefest, Fall photo tips and pumpkins

October 15, 2007 | Douglas, Photo Contests, Photo Walks, Projects, Travel

Yesterday we went to the AppleFest at Mount Wachusett. The highlight was the chair lift ride to the top of the mountain. It was a gorgeous, cold fall day — clear enough to see Boston in the distance.

Here are some pictures I took on the ride back down the mountain. More on Flickr.

More fall photo fun:

Great fall photo tips from the folks at Photojojo

Jack-o-lantern carving stencils and a pumpkin photo contest from HP and the World Wildlife Fund. The carving stencils feature endangered species and wildlife scenes, and are available at www.worldwildlife.org/pumpkins and the HP Activity Center.

To enter the contest, upload a photo of your carved pumpkin to www.snapfish.com/goingwildwithpumpkins by October 29.

(Disclosure: HP is a client, although I did not work on this project.)

A fun (but geeky) photo gift

September 13, 2007 | Family, Products, Projects

Last weekend, my family attended the 25th Surprise Anniversary Celebration for my uncle and his wife. My mom and I wanted to get them a small gift, but we wanted it to be a little personal. They are very down-to-earth, casual people, and fancy china, silver vases and so forth just don’t fit their lifestyle.

If you are faced with a similar dilemma, whether it is an anniversary, birthday or other family celebration, and you have a digital camera and a portable photo printer, you might want to do what we did for them.

We bought a nice pewter 4×6 frame at the Danforth Pewter store in Quechee, VT. Mum wrapped it in a nice gift bag — this is important. Do not wrap it in wrapping paper!

Then at the event, take a picture of the guest or guests of honor at the very beginning of the celebration. Let them pose but take the picture quick in the hustle and bustle that always occurs at the start of a party. That way, no one will be paying attention when you slip away to the corner where you’ve stashed your portable printer and print out the picture.

It blows the recipient away when they open the package. It was particularly fun at this event because a few other folks also settled on picture frames as a decent approximation of silver –25 is the silver anniversary. But no one else had a picture from the party in the frame.

Here is the picture I took at the start of the party.

And here is a picture of them opening their present.

Sometimes it’s fun being a geek. And it made my mom very happy to give them something truly unique.

Gear we used in this project: HP Photosmart R837 camera and HP Photosmart A716 printer

Messing around with Scrapblog

July 14, 2007 | Projects, Resources

While waiting for dawdling Douglas today, I had time to mess around a bit with Scrapblog.

Normally (and I would add still) scrapbooking is just not my thing. Baby book? What’s a baby book? In the old film days, it was a major accomplishment if I managed to get the pictures in an album. Now that we’ ve gone digital, I’m exceedingly grateful for Flickr and Picasa, two tools that currently I could not live without. Flickr because I no longer have to remember to email pictures to friends and family; now they just periodically check Flickr. Picasa because I have terrible file-naming and storing habits. Lucky for me, Picasa finds all my pictures for me, regardless of where I’ve hidden them on the machine.

Back to Scrapblog. It’s a neat Web application, and I was impressed by how well it uploaded to Flickr. You can also get embed code, as I did below, or publish it to a blogging service like Typepad or Blogger, which I didn’t.

Scrapblog link: http://www.scrapblog.com/sgetgood/076BE587-C26E

The pre-packaged templates give you a good place to start, and it is fairly easy to use.  You can also link some musical themes to your show, which I did not. I personally hate it when music starts playing automatically when I go to a site so I would never do that to you.

I can see how building these shows could become addictive. For digitally-oriented people who like scrapbooking and paper crafts in particular. But it’s really not for me. Still too much work, and this blog and Flickr are enough for my needs. But as promised, we will keep checking these things out. Just because something is not my cup of tea doesn’t mean it won’t be exactly what you were looking for.

Tags: Scrapblog