We recently bought a sun shelter for our upcoming beach vacation (and for any other outdoor activity that requires shade). Here is a video of us assembling and disassembling the shelter. (more…)

We spent the good part of the day today at the National Arboretum in DC . About a 40 minute drive from home, the Arboretum is an outdoor living museum of of flowers, trees, shrubs…a botanical museum. Right outside the city center, it is a very peaceful oasis that surrounds you with nature and wildlife. You can walk for hours and see a million different things.

It was our first time visiting the park and we took full advantage of the nice weather by bringing our bicycles which made seeing the huge arboretum grounds much more pleasant. There are 9 miles of trails and garden walks that surround you in vibrant flora, sweet fragrances, and the song of birds in the air. It’s not surprising that today won’t be our last time visiting and we just can’t wait to share this nice piece of nature with all of our friends and visitors.

To learn more about the arboretum and to see other pictures and the map of the place, check out its website: http://www.usna.usda.gov/

Special thanks to Nicola for putting the video together :)

Hi everyone,

So I got a new toy this week and I’ve been playing with it. Its a new DSLR camera (Canon T2i) that has really nice low-light performance and really nice video quality. As you might tell from my last time-lapse video, I’ve been getting into the video editing scene. It’s been an area of digital art that I have never really played with because I never had the gear. My point and shoot camera shoots videos but the footage always comes out flat and the colors are not very faithful. Also there’s not a great zoom lens on that camera so after months of research and saving, I finally went out and picked up my very first DSLR. Don’t get me wrong, my Point and shoot will still stay within reach because of it’s portability and stellar still shots, but for video and zoom scenarios, thats where this new camera will shine. (more…)

Since I consider myself a tech nerd and appreciate photography and videography, I thought I’d try my hand at shooting and editing video all in anticipation of the birth of my first born son. I can produce some decent photos using my camera and a little photoshop touch up, but when it comes to video, I’ve never really had the gear to produce anything worth watching. Turns out, with a little music and time warping, I can turn a mundane household chore into a little less mundane household chore. Ok I’m not claiming any Oscars, but this is my first video. I can only imagine that they’ll get more interesting once the boy is here and hopefully by then I’ll have learned a bit more about video editing.

My First Video

My camera only allows me to film 10 minutes and sped up the 10 minute cleanup down to about 2 minutes, added a song to the background, and titles and credits with a bit of transitioning. Pretty straight forward stuff. In the process I learned that its pretty important to pay attention to what resolution the source video is versus the output resolution. I still need to figure out what settings on my camera need which settings in adobe premiere. And the quality of the title screen is a bit fuzzy…

Overall, its a good start and I’m looking forward to filming my vacations and family! :)

Nicola worked super hard to put together this highlight video and now you can see the results above. The video consists of footage taken by Mats and photos taken by Louisa and my camera. Everything was mashed together into a highlights video using iMovie. The video is about 50 minutes long and about 200 MB will be streamed to your computer during the process of viewing this video. So definitely give it some time to load or "buffer" before sitting down and watching. It definitely helps to have a nice internet connection! If you love this video and want a high quality download or a DVD please let us know and we can make that happen. Thanks Nicola for such a kickass video and thanks everyone again for being such a cool crowd and making such a nice evening. Even today I can't stop thinking about that wonderful day.

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