Me in Black & White

Here I am a lot younger in a picture that I had not seen before. My grandfather must have taken it, because I ran across the negative, same issue as the image of the Indians. I had to scan it, crop and then improve.

I remember when my father planted the aspen trees behind us. That was taken in the yard of our home on Sumac Way.

Scanning Old Photos

I came across this image in a bunch of my grandfathers things. The problem was that it was just a 4"x5" Black and White negative. It is important to me for two reasons. First, my grandfather loved the Indians. Second, I still have the headdress that he is wearing. When he met these fellows, they were very, very poor and were quickly losing their culture. He helped them make the headdresses that he and the chief are wearing. He also worked with them, teaching them how to make drums, one of which I still have.

Anyway, I wasn't sure what to do with the negative and how to get at least a reasonable image. I opened the regular scanner bed and set it directly on the glass. I then removed the white backing on the scanner so that the light used to illuminate negatives was exposed. I did not use the slide/negative carrier since the negative was too large (You'll note I could not get the entire negative, so I settled for the faces). I set it in place and then set the scan to "film" and "b&W". I used 600 dpi setting. HP has some nice tips for scanning at the following link:

http://www.hp.com/united-states/consumer/digital_photography/organize_archive_photos/tips/10_tips_scanning.html

When I got it, it was a little washed out, so I used Adobe CS2 and cropped it and then used "Auto Improve". It added some dense black to the image and for taking a couple of minutes and costing nothing is a pretty good option. Now that I have the image, I'll take the negative to a good pro Photo Shop like Inkleys.

By the way, these are "Shivwits" Indians from around St. George Utah. Grandpa has the moustache.

The Three Myths: Myth #1 "It Takes Too Long"

This is an image of my two youngest daughters a few years ago. We got them a plastic blowup igloo. Great fun. When they got in, the static electricity nearly caused a thunderstorm!

Creating interesting products using your own digital images has long been plagued by what I refer to as "The Three Myths". These myths have been well earned in the industry and are still around today in an industry dominated by software tools, computer hardware and technology wonks. Here they are:

Myth Number 1: It takes too long

Myth Number 2: It costs too much

Myth Number 3: The quality is poor

Today, I'd like to take on the Myth Number 1.

In the early days of digital photography only the hearty, knowledgeable few were able to navigate the cluttered ocean of software tools and hardware. Creating a photo book using your own images was, well impossible. Along came some bright developers and not only was it expensive, it also took a long time.

At the beginning of 2008, the Photo Industry published a study saying that it took more than 19 hours for the average person to create a photo book. I was blown away and did some research. Did you know that it only takes, on average, 183 minutes to buy a car!

Who has 19 hours? I worked with a great lady, an expert in scrapbooking and the industry. When her mother died, she made her a book using an online photo book tool. I asked her what she thought.

"It took a long time" was her well considered reply.

"Will you ever make another?" She thought a moment, pursing her lips and looking up and off to the left. "No" she said after a moment. "Really?" I asked.

"Well maybe I'll do another if my father dies."

I was shocked. Here was an expert and she might make two books in her lifetime because it took too long.

More shocking was the industry's answer. After thoughtfully considering the time and effort it took, they suggested that retailer offer "training classes" in how to make a photo book.

I met another lady at a high end Photo Retail store. she had been coming to the store for more than a year in order to make the perfect book of a trip she took with her daughter.

Last March, I looked at a piece of software that touted itself as "the easiest to use option" on the market. The books were lifeless and single dimensioned. Worse yet, I did the math. If you were to try all of their potential features, you'd be choosing from more than 9.6 trillion choices. At aVinci, we're working to create solutions that create professional looking photo books, DVD's and posters in seconds.

If you have layouts or styles you like, art that impresses, tell me and we'll tell the industry.

Slideshows, DVD's and More

We live in the age of multimedia. Our lives are supplemented with wildly vivid imagery. Have you noticed the change in television studio sets since the introduction of High Definition? I took the picture above in ESPN's Digital Studio.

One of the best ways to showcase your digital images is with a slideshow. Now personally, I hate the word slideshow, but it is a word to which people relate (sometimes badly). When I was young, world travelers would come by the Elks Club with their travel photos and put on a slide show. "Here I am in front of the Eiffel Tower" was quickly followed by "My dog jumps in the Seine".

We've come a long way from simple slideshows. Here's a link to http://www.avincistudio.com/ where you can create a movie of your images in mere seconds. Just download the software and in minutes you'll see how great your images look in a full motion production.

What's more, if you'd like a couple of secret promo codes, I'll post those too if you ask.

I provided a sample above of a Wedding Production that was made in seconds using aVinci software. All you do is supply the images! Good luck.