Author Topic: Holidays 2017  (Read 2462 times)

MartinTeller

  • FAB
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 17864
  • martinteller.wordpress.com
    • my movie blog
Re: Holidays 2017
« Reply #10 on: December 25, 2017, 10:53:23 PM »
We hosted my wife's family this year (her parents, her brother and sister-in-law, their two kids, and the sister-in-law's mother). I made a ham with apple cider glaze, celebration roast for the vegetarians, a mushroom gravy and apple sauce. My wife made green beans with pecans and a flourless chocolate cake. Sister-in-law made roasted veggies and a salad, mother-in-law made rolls. The wine flowed freely, a great time was had. Probably the most successful event we've ever hosted.

Sandy

  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 12075
  • "The life we build, we never stop creating.”
    • Sandy's Cinematic Musings
Re: Holidays 2017
« Reply #11 on: December 26, 2017, 01:26:13 AM »
What a feast! :) Glad it worked out so well, Martin!



Happy Holidays, Filmspotting Friends!

smirnoff

  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 26251
    • smirnoff's Top 100
Re: Holidays 2017
« Reply #12 on: December 27, 2017, 12:39:21 AM »
All these happy Christmas stories. How nice :)

jdc

  • Godfather
  • *****
  • Posts: 7799
  • Accept the mystery
Re: Holidays 2017
« Reply #13 on: December 29, 2017, 07:43:23 PM »
Just seeing this thread, glad everybody seems to have a good holiday. Maisy mostly terrorized their two small dogs but got distracted by the Chinese style turkey



One more house party for NYs and then have to start getting more serious about life..
"Beer. Now there's a temporary solution."  Homer S.
“The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations” - David Friedman

smirnoff

  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 26251
    • smirnoff's Top 100
Re: Holidays 2017
« Reply #14 on: January 05, 2018, 12:30:03 AM »
Something I did for the family this year, and that I've been meaning to do for a while, was digitize all of the old family photo albums. It was a time consuming project but I set myself up a comfortable workstation in front of the tv with my laptop and a scanner and a 3ft pile of albums. It was probably a 10 to 12 hour project in all, but a nice thing to do if you happen to be "the family tech" and are looking for gift ideas.

It was interesting project in that it made me evaluate what photos are ultimately worth taking in a persons life. While there were probably 4000 to 5000 photos, I only bothered to keep just over 1000. I didn't go in with any particular criteria on which photos to scan and which to skip, other than just picking ones that "felt special". What I observed was that photos of landmarks and scenery from various trips over the years, particularly those without anyone in the picture, they just aren't that interesting. Enough time passes, they lose their power of "being there". They feel as impersonal as the generic image on a postcard... and ultimately less well shot. I skipped pictures of mountains and landscapes and trees and buildings and cliffs and beaches and statues and plaques by the hundred... without a family or a friend in the pictures they just didn't spark joy (and even some that did have family or friends in them felt too much like the obligatory "stand next to the world's biggest moose as say cheese" type of thing, because you're there, but without any real enthusiasm). There were perhaps a few exceptions. Some photos, even of things millions of people have taken a photo of, just happen to come out especially good. Perhaps a unique bit of weather, or a unique framing, or some accidental thing that gives it something extra. Otherwise, the "scenery" shots I did find myself compelled to keep were the ones of the back yard, or the house, or the street I grew up on... the places of our daily lives, not the places we saw once.

I also tended to skip the obligatory "blowing out the candles", and "everyone sitting around the table for christmas dinner awkwardly turning around to take a picture minus the person holding the camera", and "hold up your gift and smile", and those sorts of pictures. There are much more candid and intimate and less staged shots which are much better.

MartinTeller

  • FAB
  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 17864
  • martinteller.wordpress.com
    • my movie blog
Re: Holidays 2017
« Reply #15 on: January 05, 2018, 10:19:47 AM »
I'm going through something very similar with my Dad's photos. Except I'm scanning ALL of them, because I'm sharing them with family scattered around the country, and there's no telling what someone might find important. It's a really time-consuming process, especially because I'm sorting them into different albums depending on who (or what) is in the picture, which also requires some occasional detective work. And I'm trying to tag them all with the date taken, or the closest approximation.

I do feel a little silly scanning photos of some park that has absolutely no meaningful context. I imagine after the dust clears and everyone has claimed the photos they want, I will do some kind of culling/organizing process with the physical photos.

Are you storing yours online anywhere? I decided to go with Flickr, which has nice organizational features, but I'll keep local copies just in case Flickr disappears someday.

smirnoff

  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 26251
    • smirnoff's Top 100
Re: Holidays 2017
« Reply #16 on: January 05, 2018, 01:00:04 PM »
I think you'll be glad to have done that tagging and organizing. It slows down the process but when but when it's all said and done having a means of locating particular pics will be much easier. I may go back and try and try and do something similar because I've already experienced how hard it is to find one picture in a thousand.

When I first started I had intended on pulling the photos out of the albums for scanning but in most cases the album's adhesive backing had become so well stuck to the photos I risked damaging them. I resorted to just holding the album over the scanner and scanning whole pages at a time. It worked well, and then later I worked out a reasonably fast system for breaking those pages down to individual photos. Scanned at just 300 dpi which seemed fine. About 3 gigs of PNG files when I was done. And down to 500megs after a mass conversion to JPG through Photoshop. Quality looked the same from what I could tell.

I decided to add the photos to my existing Google photos collection. I've always been happy with their tools for viewing and sharing and quick editing. Also, it's just most convenient since I'm pretty much entirely in the Google universe already.
 

Sandy

  • Objectively Awesome
  • ******
  • Posts: 12075
  • "The life we build, we never stop creating.”
    • Sandy's Cinematic Musings
Re: Holidays 2017
« Reply #17 on: January 06, 2018, 04:06:35 PM »
Great gifts you both worked hard on, smirnoff and Martin. It's not something everyone would know how to do, or take the time to do it. I've got my photos now digitized, but it was a long, laborious process, mostly because I had one of my kids do most of it to "pay" me back for some expenses and her motivation was nil. I didn't have a good scanner, so my son set up a tri-pod with his nice camera and we took pictures of pictures! :)



jdc, I hope Maisy got to have some of that turkey. She sure looks intent on it. I've lost track of where you're living now. Are you full time in Singapore again, or visiting?

jdc

  • Godfather
  • *****
  • Posts: 7799
  • Accept the mystery
Re: Holidays 2017
« Reply #18 on: January 10, 2018, 07:16:44 PM »
Maisy got lots of treats from everybody but me. I’m back in Singapore full time trying to figure out what to do with my life
"Beer. Now there's a temporary solution."  Homer S.
“The direct use of physical force is so poor a solution to the problem of limited resources that it is commonly employed only by small children and great nations” - David Friedman

 

love