On recent trips, I've taken to sharing our journey with family and friends back home through short video snippets, usually 1 to 3 minutes long, of the things we've done. It takes quite a bit of time for me to put together a short video, so I don't know that this would work well to people traveling with children. But as a retired person with plenty of time to spare in the evenings, it has worked well for me. Here are the examples from our recent trip to New Zealand: Queenstown Luge -... Read more ..read more

While we did end up soaked during our trip, the rain at night made for some great pictures! Tangled Lanterns Fantasyland - It's a Small World ..read more

I'm making my brother a PP slideshow for an upcoming milestone birthday party that my SIL is throwing him at a restaurant. The facility has video displaying capability. My skills have been improving after making ones for my grandmother's memorial, my mother's memorial and my father's Life Story for his 80th birthday. It's rather long but my SIL still wants this played at the party, not to be the main focus, but just sort of running off to the side. So, I thought I had all the... Read more ..read more

Over the holidays, my wife and I took the family to something called Radiant Nature down in Houston. It's hard to describe. It's sort of a light show, but more with lit up stuff rather than traditional Christmas lights. They have it annually at the Houston Botanic Gardens. I recorded with my DJI Osmo Pocket 3. It's a small handheld video camera with the camera mounted on a gimbal. It has a 1" sensor, which is larger than normal for this size of camera. That gave it reasonable low light... Read more ..read more

We decided to visit Paris and the Christmas Markets in the Alsace region of France. I didn't bring a traditional camera. I got a new DJI Osmo Pocket 3 and shot video instead. My wife mostly shot pics with her phone. For the videos, we did roughly 6 minute "1 day" videos with the two of us describing our day and showing video clips. I did the videos nightly during most of the trip to share our journey with friends, so they aren't particularly polished. If anyone has any questions about the... Read more ..read more

So I have recently been playing with AI photo generation. Every year we try and get a good picture of the dog in a Christmas hat, its not so easy. This year I took 100 pictures of the dog, created a model and set the scene. I was very impressed with the results, I've only just started so I have more to learn. The thing is after sending it to the wife she said its not photography. It's not really a photo, but still much of the same work went into it. It just did not actually happen. I know... Read more ..read more

Not updated in a while, but here are a selection... https://photography.flyingfelix.net ..read more

My son has loved photography his whole life and is hard to shop for, so I’m temped to buy him something camera-related for Christmas. I think he has 2 obvious needs, but he has been reticent (I floated both ideas past him). 1. He has been experimenting with sports photography. Unfortunately most of the pictures that he took were out of focus, and I’m not sure how much was user error (he said he was messing around with the settings) vs. an inferior setup. I think he was shooting on his Nikon... Read more ..read more

I just don't have it in my to carry my DSLR anymore. It's just too big and bulky. This trip I used my phone with Halide app more and more due to size, but I miss having my gear with me. Then I saw a kid with a mirrorless strapped to his bag strap on his shoulder with a prime lens on it. I was like. . . . this is what I want. It was like 1/4 the size of my mark 5. so I started looking around. I'm really liking the canon r8. But. . . . it doesn't have in camera stabilization. I have... Read more ..read more

It's that time of year again. With a few recent exceptions, we've been setting up our garage as a photo studio every fall on the weekends around Halloween to take family pictures, Halloween pictures, and Christmas card pictures. I thought I'd summarize the process for anyone interested. We use a white paper backdrop. For flooring, we use three sheets of Thrifty White Tile Board. It gives a light reflection of your subject, which helps give them a grounded look... Read more ..read more