Photo Walks - Snapshot Chronicles

Doug’s visit with Grandmum

08.02.2007 by Susan Getgood //

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.

Every year on Father’s Day weekend, the Collings Foundation, a local non-profit dedicated to restoring old planes and autos, has an open house. This is pretty much the only chance for the community to view the Foundation’s impressive collection of Indy race cars, antique autos (including a 1940 caddy built for Al Capone) and vintage airplanes. We try to go every year, since it is about 5 minutes from our house.

This year, Douglas brought his camera for the very first time. Here are some of his pictures.

Uncle Doug at Mom’s desk

A neat propeller (with a little editing in Picasa to lighten the image)

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We’ve gone a few years in a row, so this year for my pictures, I focused mostly on hood ornaments, plane art and advertising slogans. Most of these images have been edited in Picasa, but very simply — some cropping, sharpening and the “feeling lucky setting.”

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On the Packard ornament, I converted to B&W to make it a bit more stark.

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On the Indian hood ornament, I increased the shadow to make the image pop.

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You can see all our pictures from the day on Flickr. Mine here, Doug’s here.

Tags: Collings Foundation, vintage planes, antique autos, hood ornaments

The First Grade Field Trip

06.05.2007 by Susan Getgood //

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