Learning New Skills - Sigh!

Greeting a new group of University students.

We are finally establishing our new routine, one which includes my teaching part time and being WAY busier than I want to be!  Our 10-week summer adventure was wonderful...now what?!

Hanging out with grandchildren at the airport.

One of the things that happened which has been a mixed blessing, was the invitation to do a presentation about our trip.  However, that invitation was for last night, and we have not even been home a full month.

Making it up to Meesha for being gone so long this summer.

We took on the challenge, partly because it pushed us to do that preliminary sort - the one where you have to delete some images which are duplicates, or triplicates, and you just don't need to save them! The beauty of switching to digital photography is that ability to push the "delete" button.  The nightmare of digital photography is that you can take so many photos that you can get overloaded with images.  That is me.  Daryl is much better about selective shooting, and deleting.  So he had fewer images for me to go through.

Photographing the Tetons, in Wyoming.

The challenge was met, and the presentation went well - if a bit too long.  Again, which photos do you put in the slide show, and which do you leave out?  Which stories do you tell, and which do you leave out, "saving for another time?"

Really?  This is only one shot?

All that being said, one thing I had really wanted to put in the slide-show was a video clip of some sort - I took a few on my camera, and Daryl took GoPro images while flying.  But videography is new to both of us, and we really don't know what to do with these video clips!

With my new Mac computer (I have made a transition from PC), I called on my daughter.  She has been a Mac user for a few years and has used iMovies and Garage Band a lot in her work - Christine teaches middle level theatre arts.  She is also very tech savvy.  When I spoke to her about my dilemma, she was excited to share a handout she had mode for her students on how to create an iMovie!  Woo hoo!  I just KNEW I could follow directions written for middle school students.   How hard could it be?

Here is where you insert a laugh-track.  I did follow the directions, but then I had the start of a movie trailer I couldn't complete.  And time was short.  So I called Christine again, and she talked me off the ledge, giving me just enough information so I could muddle through my first movie.

Hurray!  And when I showed it to Daryl and saw the delight on his face, I knew all was well.

Then technology struck once again.  The movie would not insert into my PowerPoint, no matter how I compressed it, or how I saved it, and the PowerPoint slides themselves were getting messed up.  That was NOT good - the presentation was just a few days away!

So...I fixed the slideshow, taking out the movie, and decided that would just have to be a private showing film for the moment.

And here it is for your viewing pleasure - my first 1-minute iMovie using video clips and photos from one portion of our trip.  The flying, of course!

Enjoy!

https://youtu.be/QellED2aiiw