Products - Snapshot Chronicles

Announcing Photographic Memories

11.01.2007 by Susan Getgood //

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

Going on a Picnik

10.16.2007 by Susan Getgood //

I’ve just started to explore the web-based graphic program Picnik, and so far I am impressed. I’ve been using Picasa, but there are some things it doesn’t do (or I can’t figure out) so I still have to use Irfanview for them. For example, resize images.

Picnik seems to be able to handle just about everything I need and it is very easy to use. It just came out of beta, and the premium version is available for free trial right now. I wish it would let me resize images in inches not just pixels, but I can deal.

Here are two images that I messed around with today.

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

A fun (but geeky) photo gift

09.13.2007 by Susan Getgood //

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