Fun with Digital Photography..."Toys" for your Camera!

When I am on Photojojo's site, I feel like a kid in a candy store.  I'm a gadget girl at heart, and I love my camera...and Photojojo's site is filled with wonderful "toys" for your digital camera!  I try to take the time to check it out at least once a week to see what's going on over at their site.  If you haven't visited them yet, you are in for a treat!

I'll tell you about a couple of my favorites.  The Pop-up Flash Bounce is a hood with a mirror that attaches to the flash of your DSLR after its popped up.  It directs the flash from your camera up instead, bouncing it off the ceiling to create a more natural light.  You can see the results with my before and after photo...it really does make a difference!  For $30, you get beautiful lighting without spending a lot of money for an external flash.

BEFORE

AFTER

I'm also rather attached to the iPad Card Readers.  Plug one of these into your iPad and you can download your photos in a snap.  If you're traveling without your computer, this is a good way to make sure your digital photos are saved in more than one place.  On our last vacation, I downloaded my photos to my iPad every day, uploaded them to my favorite photo sharing and cloud storage app, Linea, and felt safe knowing my photos were backed up in the event something should happen to my camera.

I've got my eye on a couple new gadgets...the Super Secret Spy Lens adapter looks like fun, as does the Easy Macro Cell Lens Band, but I think the Wide Angle & Macro Lens Adapter might be my next purchase!  There are so many great "toys" to choose from!  If you enjoy digital photography, you'll have a lot of fun visiting Photojojo's site.

Have you tried any of Photojojo's products?  Let us know what you like!

Photo Gifts are fun all year long!

There’s a lot of ways to enjoy your photos.  This year my favorite Christmas gift came from my middle child.  She spent countless hours working on a photo slide show for me, using digital photos from throughout the years as well as text highlighting the important activities and events from 2011.   I have to say I was pretty amazed.  She even got the thumbs up from her older brother, which was a pretty big compliment coming from him.   And the whole family enjoyed watching and reminiscing!

But there were lots of photo gifts to go around this year.  Each of my children received a journal with a custom designed photo cover, from Paper Coterie.  This is a really fun site that I recently have discovered. They offer a diverse and unique line of photo books, cards and gifts.  If you haven’t checked out their site, take a look!  One of my favorite products is the Memory Keeper, which I’ve used for stashing trip momentos I want to hold on to.  Right now they are offering 50% off of all planners, journals and memory keepers for orders placed before January 23rd.  Just enter the code WELCOME2012 at checkout!

I also made photo Christmas ornaments at Personalization Mall.  They came out really cute and were a huge hit with the grandparents.  A friend of mine used mpix for hers and was really impressed as well.  Both of these sites have a lot of fun photo gift items.  

But photo gifts aren’t just for the holidays!   There’s so many times throughout the year that a photo gift says “I love you.”  And Valentine’s Day will be here before you know it…

What’s the most unique photo gift you ever made?

A Photo a Week

Every year I think about doing a Project 365, where you take one photo each day to document your year.  While I love the idea, realistically I know it won’t happen for me.  I’ll forget one day and then be disappointed and give up on my project. So I decided that a better goal for me to start with is one picture a week...Project 52.

Most weeks I take more than one picture; some weeks I take hundreds.  But when I look back at my photos from 2011, most of them revolve around my kids’ sports, holidays, vacations, or fun activities.  It definitely adds up to a lot of digital photos!  But I’d like to have more photos of our “everyday” life. 

I took tons of “everyday” life photos when the kids were little…as they’ve gotten older, I find myself documenting less of those moments.  So my New Year’s Photo Resolution is one photo a week, motivating me to take photos of moments that might otherwise be forgotten.

My plan is to store these photos on Linea, and add my journaling in.  At the end of the year, I might just do an album of my 52 “everyday” moment photos!

Anyone care to join me and document more of your "everyday" moments?

A New Chapter

One door closes, another opens.

And happily, the door that has opened is a natural extension of what I've been doing for so many years.

For as long as I can remember, I've been taking photos and telling the stories that go along with them.   Our photos tell our stories...they capture the moments that define our lives.  But if you don't write those stories down, they get lost along the way.  So for years, I have been creating albums for myself, and later my family, documenting both the visual piece and the story.   


For many years, I was a direct seller for a company specializing in memory preservation.  It was an amazing experience.  This allowed me, a stay at home soccer mom with three very active kids, to work around my own schedule and earn some extra income.  In the beginning, it was definitely out of my comfort zone.  But I found I genuinely enjoying meeting people, hearing their stories and helping them choose the right products to meet their needs.  I met many women (and men) along the way who feel as strongly about preserving their memories as I do.  I made close friends that I never would have met otherwise, from across the country to my own backyard.  And I gained invaluable experience.

For the last couple of years, I've belonged to APPO, the Association of Personal Photo Organizers.  This organization has members across the US and Canada (and even some members in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand!) who help people who are overwhelmed by their printed and digital photos.  Our clients truly want to get their memories organized into formats they can enjoy, whether its simply getting those printed photos into a box, or creating a photo book or slide show, or even a piece of wall art!  However, they simply don't have the time to do it themselves, or the thought of doing it paralyzes them.  This too has been an amazing experience.  Its an honor to be allowed into the most precious moments of my clients' lives.   I've had the opportunity to work with people on everything from getting their loose pictures sorted into photo safe boxes to creating photo books to photo slide shows set to music and much more!

And now I have yet another opportunity to continue working in this industry, in a completely new way.  APPO is now sponsored by a new start-up company called Linea Photosharing, a technology company offering products to store and share digital images securely with family and friends.  I've been offered a position in this new venture involving these two companies.   I'll be sharing more in weeks and months to come, but if you'd like to see more about what APPO is all about, you can always check out our site at www.appo.org.  I'm excited about whats to come...and I love that feeling of walking through a new door!