by David McGuffin | Aug 31, 2012 | Destinations, Essential Travel Resources, Photography
Dave Davis is a friend who has traveled on several tours with me. He is an avid photographer and always seems to come up with some good photos. Recently, he provided some handy hints on photography and archiving the digital images. In the next few day, Dave is going to share some of his hints.
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One fall we traveled with another couple up the Blue Ridge Parkway. George had just bought a new camera as a gift for his wife. He quickly commandeered the camera for his own use and proceeded to take 5-10 shots of the view from EVERY pull off along the way! We would drive to the next overlook and George would jump out and start taking pictures – left or right, close-up or far away. Whatever caught his eye. This was back in the day of film cameras and he paid a pile of money to get the rolls developed. He was so excited to get the prints back but after looking at 10 or 15 pictures he realized he had made some major mistakes. What he had hoped would be a fine documentation of the great fall scenery along all the pull-offs on the Blue Ridge ended up being a collection of over 400 random pictures that all started to look alike. They, as a collection, became meaningless.
Digital cameras make the process of organizing your pictures quite easy and would have solved some of George’s mistakes. When one cuts away all the bells and whistles of digital cameras, their most basic functions are to take the picture, save the pictures and assign a number in the order in which it was taken.
Additionally, digital cameras are generally very easy and quick to download, only requiring hitting of a couple buttons or plugging them into your laptop, or another device. I try to download my pictures each evening and keep the digital copies in a separate file from that stored in the camera. At the same time, I usually do a quick editing job and delete unwanted pictures from the copy collection. Some cameras have the ability to organize on their memory chip. That is fine, but if your camera dies or goes missing during a trip, all the pictures you have taken might be lost.
When downloading my photos (or files) most systems allow you to “tag” or label the images/files. I simply use an “a” for the pictures taken the first day, “b” for the pictures taken on the second day, and so on. My individual photos will be then identified as “a001, a002, a003 . . .” Downloading usually only takes a minute or so to complete, and with it being done, I feel much better about having a remotely stored back up copy of my photos.
Usually, I wait until I return home to do the final organizing of my photo collection. Often it becomes a better collection if I re-arrange the order in which they appear. For instance, you might not take the introduction/identification picture of a visited place at the very beginning of the visit. Renaming the photo file is a very simple task on the computer. Just type in a new number/name and you are done! The renamed picture will automatically move into alphabetical/numerical order in the set.
-Dave Davis
Jump to Dave’s next article with more photo tips and tricks.
by David McGuffin | Aug 11, 2012 | Destinations, Essential Travel Resources, Photography
Dave Davis is a friend who has traveled on several tours with me. He is an avid photographer and always seems to come up with some good photos. Recently, he provided some handy hints on photography and archiving the digital images. In the next few day, Dave is going to share some of his hints.
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Aren’t photographs a terrific way to refresh your memory of people, places, events and things? And now with greater technology, it has never been so easy to produce a great photographic collection to memorialize a touring vacation. I am going to share a few approaches that I have developed over the years that might just help make your photo collection more valuable to you. It is really easy. Just let your photo collection tell the story.
I often start a collection with the photos showing the trip location/destination and primary people. Sometimes I use the tour brochure that led me to select the trip. Sometimes I use a map or a picture of the destination airport or famous landmark that identifies the place.
On a recent tour, I started my collection with a picture of David McGuffin, wearing his official tour shirt with bold letters displaying “IRELAND SCOTLAND” and with the backdrop being the Hogwarts Express viaduct memorialized in the Harry Potter stories. I followed that with a picture of myself, my wife and our niece in front of the rock formation at Giants Causeway, and that was followed by a map of Scotland. With just three pictures I have opened the story and set the stage.
From there my collections are pretty much day by day. I often take a picture of a map of where the day would be spent, and sometimes one of his handouts that told more of the location. It is so helpful to my aging brain cells to have the city names (or sites) pop out from the map and be further detailed in the handouts. Then the pictures follow through the day.
When we arrive at a city, cathedral, castle, or another site, I take pictures that identify the subject. It could just be the entrance sign or anything else that tells where we are at. Display boards at the site are often good to use for identification and more detailed information on what is being visited. Then it’s the fun shots of whatever there is to see, but the long-term important thing is that the picture collection itself will present where that pictures are taken.
I find that it adds to the collection to not limit myself to taking pictures of the special places visited but also the more seemingly mundane things. Take a picture of the bus, inside (with passengers) and outside with the driver. Take a picture of the motel front, lobby, and grounds. Take a picture of your room. Take a picture of the restaurant name, its inside, the food/drink as it is being presented, fellow diners from the tour and even the waiter. And you must take pictures of some the “unique” European bathrooms! I don’t know if it is legal to do so, but I have also taken pictures of the money used in different countries.
Following these tips will make your collection more meaningful to you and to anyone you share it with.
-Dave Davis
Jump to Dave’s second article: “Organizing Your Tour Photos”
by David McGuffin | Aug 6, 2012 | Destinations, Essential Travel Resources
I’ve dedicated the last seven days (about 70 hours) to improve the appearance and appeal of my web presence. I am a self-taught web builder, but over the years, I’ve picked up a lot relating to website design and content. So, now that I am at the end of my allocated time, I’ve decided to roll out the new web appearance a few pages at a time. So, if you get a chance, take a look at https://davidmcguffin.com and let me know what you think!
P.S. you may need to refresh your browser with CTL-F5.
-David
by David McGuffin | Mar 14, 2012 | Adventures in Tour Guiding, Essential Travel Resources
I am up at 4:00 a.m. this morning getting in the “mood” for travel. Later today, I will fly to Atlanta and onward to Rome, so I’ve got a long travel day ahead of me. Some years ago, I began the ritual of getting up extra early on travel days to help beat the jet lag the following day in Europe. For me, this seems to help, I sleep better on the flight over and am not quite so dazed my first day in Europe.
Saturday, my tour group arrives in Rome and we will make our way up through Tuscany, into Provence, and ultimately to Barcelona. A nice route connection the three countries. I’ll be blogging and posting on Facebook along the way, so keep up with me as the tour progresses.
I am doing some experimenting with my newly trimmed arsenal of electronic gadgets. I’ve got an iPad and my iPhone and that’s it! So, I’ll be learning along the way to use the new features and apps. It’s tough leaving my trusty Dell laptop sitting in my office, but it will also feel good carrying a lighter load.
by David McGuffin | Jul 26, 2011 | David's Journal, Essential Travel Resources
Flight delays seem to jump on me like the plague this year. Charlotte and I are heading to Tuscany for our vacation. Everything
went well until we got to our first stop/lay-over in Atlanta. Our flight to JFK was due to depart at 3:30. Charlotte wanted to be the first on the plane so she could get her carry-on bag stowed, so we were in our seats before 3:00. We sat there, at the gate, until 6:15!
It seemed there was severe weather in the New York area and all airports had shutdown. We were due to catch a flight to Pisa at 9:15 from JFK, so still in Atlanta at 6:15 did not bode well for us. Luckily, there was an Air France flight departing for Paris at 11:15, so we got off the Delta flight, ate dinner at Terminal E, and boarded the flight for Paris.
Currently, we are still in the Paris airport waiting for our flight to Pisa. By my count, it has been 26 hours since we left our home in Middleburg, and we are not to our destination yet! Oh, the joys of travel!
by David McGuffin | Jun 27, 2011 | David's Journal, Essential Travel Resources
I think Steinbeck said it like this, “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” After this day of running around like a chicken with my head cut off, I totally agree! I thought I had organized a good travel plan for leaving Barcelona and arriving in the remote village of Carcassonne, France, but instead, I ended up with a day of misfortune.
My first mistake was not making an advanced reservation on the train from Barcelona to Narbonne, France. Now, this was not because of poor planning, for I had visited the train station the day before my travel to get information and a schedule. However, to book the ticket for the next day, I would have had to wait in a que for two hours or more. The “same day of travel que” was only a few minutes. I reasoned that it made no sense to waste two hours now, when in the morning, I could get the same ticket in ten minutes.
As it turned out, there were no seats available on the first leg of my journey, so I had to wait three hours in the Barcelona train station in order to catch the next train to France.
I hung around in the McDonald’s, located in Barcelona’s train station, for three hours. HA! I even bought a Coke Light and french fries, just so I could take advantage of the free WiFi!
Finally, at 1:00 p.m., I boarded my train and was on my way to France. We had to change trains at the Spain/France border, which was a major upgrade from the slow “Spain Train” to a sleek and fast TGV Train.
I arrived in Narbonne, France at 5:00 p.m. I had had enough foresight to prebook a rental car at the Narbonne station, but upon arrival, the rental car office had closed early this Saturday afternoon! Ughhh! I found the Hertz rental office was still open and was able to secure the only car remaining, a tin-can Ford Fiesta. No worries, so I headed off on the superhighway toward Carcassonne.
About forty-five minutes later, I was safely tucked into my hotel in Carcassonne. Nestled between the hill and vineyard, I was ready to do some exploring.
One fall we traveled with another couple up the Blue Ridge Parkway. George had just bought a new camera as a gift for his wife. He quickly commandeered the camera for his own use and proceeded to take 5-10 shots of the view from EVERY pull off along the way! We would drive to the next overlook and George would jump out and start taking pictures – left or right, close-up or far away. Whatever caught his eye. This was back in the day of film cameras and he paid a pile of money to get the rolls developed. He was so excited to get the prints back but after looking at 10 or 15 pictures he realized he had made some major mistakes. What he had hoped would be a fine documentation of the great fall scenery along all the pull-offs on the Blue Ridge ended up being a collection of over 400 random pictures that all started to look alike. They, as a collection, became meaningless. 
