Snapshot Chronicles

Susan Getgood's personal blog

Three Piggy Opera

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Last Thursday was the 1st Grade production of the Three Piggy Opera. You know the story — huff, puff etc.

Douglas was a Stick Peddler. I got some okay shots, but this was the first time I wished for the control that an SLR gives you. They somewhat dimmed the lights, and the lens on my little Canon Digital Elph just couldn’t cope with distance and dimness. So we may start looking around, pricing the options. Maybe for Christmas.

But I still don’t want all that weight when we are on the move, sightseeing, hiking etc., so I suspect the point and shoot will always be with me.

Here’s a picture of Douglas saying his lines. I softened the image (soft focus) and then focused on him (focal B&W) using Picasa.

3piggy.jpg

More pictures on Flickr.

Another entry for the HP Shrek Photo Contest

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One of the best things about blogging is that you “meet” people that you would never have the opportunity to meet in “real life.”

Over the course of working on the blogger outreach for HP’s Shrek photo contest, now in its home stretch, I met Melody from Slurping Life. (What a great name for a blog!)

Melody learned about the contest on Picture This, was kind enough to blog about it and tried, initially unsuccessfully, to enter it.

The folks at HP and Snapfish reached out to her and she patiently helped them troubleshoot the problems. You can read all about it on her blog.

The good news: she was finally able to successfully enter a picture in the My Little Ogre contest going on now. Please take a moment to check it out and vote.

Tags: HP, Shrek, photo contest

The First Grade Field Trip

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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.

fieldtripkids.jpg

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.

twisterone.jpg twistertwo.jpg

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.

polarbear.jpg

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