My New Photo Album

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Dreadful news is coming out of Christchurch, of terrorist attacks on two local Mosques. There have been multiple deaths and injuries. A lot of innocent people will be traumatised. How could this happen in our peaceful little country?

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This album is the project I have been working on for the last couple of weeks. For some time I have wanted a way to easily access my photos. The problem was I have stored them chronologically, and only in the last few years have I used tags. One time I began trawling through them and transferring special ones to a mobile hard drive, but I soon realised that was not satisfactory.

The new iPad Mini seemed to be the answer, but my computer failed to recognise it. I can’t update the computer because then the paid for PhotoShop software would not work. How could I transfer images from the computer to the Mini? Fortunately my excellent son solved the problem. He set up a link from the computer to the Mini over the internet, so that blocks of photos can be transferred instantly. Marvellous! But he warned me that he didn’t know how stable the link was. It could simply vanish. Determined to make the most of it I got stuck in, working on it most of each day, and fearing to shut down the computer at night in case that broke the link.

After more than a week of this feverish activity we had a power cut and the link endured! Nevertheless I kept at it, searching the hard drive and my Blipfoto journal for desired shots. I have fourteen years of digital photos and more than 3600 blips. Often my blip is just one of several eligible shots taken on any day. Some special days out on a trip have generated 20 or 30 shots I want to keep. I have not only chosen the shots I am proud of, but masses that I find interesting and want to remember. A majority of the shots needed some processing, mainly resizing.

Now I have 1300 shots on the Mini, divided into categories, and readily accessible. This is the base on which I can add to as I find more, or start on scanning my extensive film collection.

It’s not ideal, however. The Mini software displays the date and time a shot was taken, but there’s no allowance for a caption. Not being able to name the places, plants and wildlife is pretty frustrating for me.

And now to rest my poor sore eyes…