Archive for the 'Travel' Category
Doug’s visit with Grandmum
August 2, 2007 | Douglas, Photo Walks, Travel
Douglas had a great time visiting with his grandmother in Andover. They visited Strawbery Banke in Portsmouth NH, where this picture was taken, and the coastal town of Newburyport MA.
He also had plenty of time to play computer games with his uncle. And care for his WebKinz. Funny, he had two when he left, a pug and a chihuahua, and somehow a little gorilla came home with him 
More on WebKinz and how kids interact with social networks later this summer, but my experience is not that different from Jeneane’s so far.
More of Doug’s pics here.
Doug’s Lobster Dinner
July 15, 2007 | Douglas, Travel
So yesterday, I said I didn’t think I’d use Scrapblog much. Figures that today Doug would reach an important milestone that merited the Scrapblog treatment: his first lobster dinner of his very own in a restaurant. We went into Boston today, popped in quickly to the NE Aquarium, and then took a Harbor Cruise to Charlestown where we briefly toured a destroyer and the USS Constitution. Afterward, we went to Legal Seafoods for a late lunch, early dinner:
Scrapblog link: http://www.scrapblog.com/sgetgood/6B7BE503-ACD3
The weird thing about Scrapblog was that today I could not find a simple direction to “generate embed code.” Instead I had to muck around with the different publish options until I found one that would work with my Wordpress blog.
On another note, Doug and I both took our new HP cameras today. I was a bit disconcerted at not having a viewfinder, even though we really don’t use them that much with snapshot cameras, but overall, pleased with the quality of the photos. You can see the whole set from the day on Flickr.
Doug’s principal goal was to get a good picture of a jelly fish. Which he did.
Finding Hope in Photos: Children and Uganda
June 26, 2007 | Charity, Photo Contests, Travel
cross-posted to Marketing Roadmaps
This spring, as I wrote in May, I did some blogger outreach to mom bloggers about HP’s Capture Your Ever After photo contest. This post is a direct result of that project.
The background: Part of friendship is to say thank you. We decided to thank the bloggers who wrote about the contest by making a donation of an HP digital camera, compact photo printer and some supplies to a charity of their choice.We also decided to send the gear directly to the women, so they could have the pleasure of donating it personally to their favorite local charities.
Because the donation aspect was not promoted in advance, it was a bit of a surprise to the bloggers when they got the email offering them the gear, but none of them had any trouble thinking of a cause that meant something to them personally. They also all took the time to let us know what they planned to do with it, even though we didn’t make it a requirement that they do so.
Tracey Clark’s donation is going to war-torn Northern Uganda next month with Katie Gardner of San Diego.
Katie is part of a group connected with Children of the Nations. They will be spending three weeks working with children and families in the IDP (internally displaced people) camps. Some of the folks going will be doing counseling, but Katie and small group of four or five others will be doing photo projects with the children.
She told me that working with third-world children, giving them a chance to use photography as a creative outlet has been a dream of hers ever since she saw the documentary Born into Brothels which documents the lives of children who live in Calcutta’s red-light district.
“When kids take pictures, they have a unique view. I’m really looking forward to helping these children experience the world in new ways through photography. I hope it gives them hope for the future.”
Including the camera and compact printer donated by HP, Katie has two brand new digital cameras, two printers, a handful of used polaroid cameras and cash donations from friends and family to purchase supplies. They still need a scanner so they can scan in the polaroids and leave the originals with the children. If you’d like to help, drop Katie a note at katieann10@gmail.com.
Katie thinks it’s important that we hear and see the smaller stories from Africa and other third world nations, not just the larger than life efforts of celebrities like Madonna and Bono so she is developing a blog to document her Uganda trip. You’ll also be reading more about Katie’s project here and on Tracey’s blog, Picture This.
Over the summer, Katie’s kids in Uganda, Tracey’s daughter Julia (age 9) in California, Douglas (age 7) here in Massachusetts and two friends of Katie’s in San Diego, ages 7 and 9, will take pictures using some simple themes, including laughter, friends, sunshine and where I live. When Katie returns in August, we’ll do a series of posts showing their worlds through their eyes. It should be interesting to see the differences and similarities between the American and Ugandan children.
Katie says she hopes these pictures will help Americans better understand what is happening in Uganda:
“Not only do I want the kids in Uganda to have a creative outlet to think about their lives in a new way, I want people back home to be transformed by seeing the world though these kids’ eyes. And I want both sides to really see the potential for hope in places where people have been suffering for so many years. I want people back home to be moved to see how they can make a difference; and even if not in Africa, then how can we make a difference in our own backyard? I’m lucky enough to go overseas, but it’s so easy to be the catalyst for change in our own families and neighborhoods when we allow ourselves to open our eyes to what’s going on around the world.”
Bon voyage, Katie.
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Check out Invisible Children, another group that helps the children of Uganda.
Update, 27 June: Tracey’s post Picture Hope
Tags: children of the nations, invisible children, HP, Tracey Clark, Katie Gardner, charity, digital pictures
Posted by Susan Getgood @ 8:28 am | 2 Comments
World in Focus Travel Photo Contest
June 24, 2007 | Photo Contests, Travel
Actually, it’s two contests – one for amateurs sponsored by National Geographic Traveler and one for professionals sponsored by Photo District News.
Categories: Wilderness Photography; The Human Condition; Extreme Exploration; Urban Landscapes; Snapshots; Open Series.
Entry fee for amateurs is $12 per entry, for professionals, $35. Deadline is August 21, 2007.
Tags: travel, photo contest
The First Grade Field Trip
June 5, 2007 | General, Photo Walks, Travel
Yes, it’s true. I was a chaperone for the first grade field trip last week. And lived to tell the tale. So did the 5 boys in my group.
We went to the EcoTarium in Worcester, an excellent choice for kids of this age (6-7 years). There’s enough to do to keep them busy for a few hours, with enough variety that every kid will find something to interest him, but the place isn’t so big that you’ll lose track of your kids. Even if they are running in two or three different directions.
The teachers were also very smart. We had a list of animals to look for, which kept the kids moving along as they wanted to spot as many as they could.
Here are some of the highlights of the day. More pics on Flickr.
My field trip group. Douglas is the first one on the right left. I “whited out” the names of the two boys whose name tags were also visible using an open source graphics program called GIMP that my brother recommended. He said it has the functionality of PhotoShop without the cost. I’ll report more as we investigate it.
They had a whole exhibit about insects that eat blood — leeches, mosquitos, ticks and so on. As you can probably imagine, 7 year old boys thought that was cool. One of the best bits was the game of twITCHer. In the second picture above, Douglas had a case of red eye. I removed it with a simple photo viewer called IrfanView, also a discovery of my brother.
It was a cool day, so the polar bear was actually out of his den. This is a color, unedited photo, but I managed somehow to get just the bear and the rocks, without any of the colored balls (or whatever they were) floating in his pool. As a result, the picture is stark, monochromatic, almost severe. I really like it because I think it conveys what a polar bear really is. Not a happy fluffy cartoon that sells soft drinks. A serious, deliberate survivor.
Tags: EcoTarium, IrfanView, polar bear
Posted by Susan Getgood @ 11:11 am | 2 Comments
Down on the Farm
May 29, 2007 | Travel, Vermont
Well not exactly a farm. We own a house and some land in Barnard VT, just outside Woodstock. David has been remodeling the house for the past year, and we’ve started going up on weekends as a family. It’s great because we can bring the dogs. In fact, Dave spent a large part of this past weekend working on a brick patio which we are going to fence in as a dog yard. I on the other hand was tasked mostly with keeping Douglas out of his way. A 7-year old’s “help” is problematic shall we say when you are trying to get a big project done :-).
Saturday, Douglas and I ventured to Rutland to buy a (cheap) gas grill. On the way to Rutland, we had lunch in Pittsfield. On the way back, we popped into the Norman Rockwell Museum and got ice cream at the Mountain Creamery in Woodstock.
On Sunday, we spent most of the day at Billings Farm and Museum. It was sheep shearing weekend, and they had plenty of activities for the kids. Ice cream making, weaving, carding wool, crafts, plus meeting the baby chicks and the oxen, and watching them shear the sheep for the summer. The farm house is quite impressive, if not typical of Vermont life in 1890. Entire picture set.
We also wandered a bit in the village Sunday afternoon. Much as Chicago did cows and NYC did german shepherd dogs, Woodstock and vicinity are doing sheep. We saw quite a few over the weekend and took a few pics. More over the summer, I’m certain. We’re planning to stay at the house for most of August, assuming we can get the Internet access sorted. One of the only drawbacks of the house is that we are in a cell dead zone. No cell phone, no Blackberry email or web access. Right now, only dial-up (snooze). We can get satellite, just need to order it. On the to-do list.
Now for the $25K question: do you know what this animal is? We think it is a weasel that had set up a den under our porch. Needless to say, the dogs took a dim view of it. Dave sealed up all the little gaps in the foundation, and afterward we never saw it again. Although the dogs did remain hopeful!
Tags: Vermont, Woodstock, travel
About our masthead
May 18, 2007 | General, Travel
Snapshot Chronicles was designed by the talented Karen Rani of Swank Web Style. Karen also did the design for my business Web site and professional blog Marketing Roadmaps.
Karen, who blogs over at Troll Baby, suggested the photo of us swimming in Oahu for the masthead because we looked like we were having lots of fun. Which is of course what this blog is all about. Having fun.
My #1 reader and touchstone for all such things, my mother, concurred.
So you have them to thank for the fact that anyone who reads this site directly, versus in an RSS reader, will be faced with a photo of me in my swimsuit.
If you’d like to see more pictures from our Hawaii vacation, check out this Flickr set. Most of the pictures were taken by my husband David, with a few by me and Douglas.
And yes, in the masthead picture, we are both trying to execute the Shaka sign with varying degrees of success.
