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Five smart ways to save your kids’ artwork
1. Frame it! The obvious choice, but sometime it’s too big a hassle, especially when the art is coming in by the bagful at the end of every week. Another option is wall appliqués like Kitsch artwork frames ($36) which make it easy to “frame” art on the wall and change it out depending on your feeling. A few other options like this are available, but make sure the openings are large enough to handle big sizes or you’ll be stuck trying to find only small drawings that will fit (usually rare for the pre-school set). 
2. Use iPhoto or animoto.com to make a musical slideshow you can send around to folks by email.
3. Create a binder (larger than 8X10) to store flat art that you can organize by year. Or, take photos of the art and use services like Apples iPhoto or Inkubook.com to make pro-looking art books featuring your child’s masterpieces.
4. Take a trip down to the local hardware store and get the artwork laminated. Laminated art makes for fine family placemats so everyone can enjoy them.
5. Take photos of the art and make it into a calendar to give away this holiday season. KodakGallery.com and all the other photo sites have calendar options.
Whatever you do, don’t throw it all away OR store it in boxes waiting for some day. The longer it sits unframed, the better chance it will eventually end up at the bottom of a landfill anyway.
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Best “priceless” fathers day gift
A dad on our forum related how he had made a video of his own son and baby to give to him for Father’s Day. Isn’t that about the best present you can get as a dad? These fatherhood years go by so quickly and all we all love to try to recapture the feelings we had through them. Videos made in iMovie or in Adobe’s Video Editing suite for PC can be the best Father’s Day gift of all.
Here is the video HDFree gave to his son and sent us:
Though I’m not a big country fan and I find “Let them be Little” by Billy Dean a little sugary sweet, it’s hard not to get a little teary listening to the lyrics that talk about how short childhood is.
We made a list of other good home movie songs, some of which, I’ve put below, but visit the link to see the rest. If you have other suggestions, add them to the comments section.
Some of those other suggestions:
Birth
Forever Young – Bob Dylan – I first heard this as a background music in an Apple ad explaining the joys of iMovie. It’s a wonderful song, full of wonderful wishes for a new born. 
Where do the Childen Play by Cat Stevens – puts parenting versus other grand projects in perspective, and makes a darn nice soundtrack.
LongMayYou Run by Neil Young – If you like the raspy voice of a young Neil Young, and also edit out a few lyrics, (“back in ’62 when I last saw you alive”) this has a good beat and mood.
May you Never by Eric Clapton
Somewhere Over the Rainbow by Israel Kamakawiwo’ole – very soothing variation on the old standard, and if not overused, less clichéd than other more popular versions.
Crawling Babies
La Donna e Mobile – You’ll instantly recognize La donna è mobile (“Woman is fickle”) as the misogynistic song from Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Rigoletto (1851), Though you don’t need to consider that last part. Just use it as backdrop to a baby (preferably female) cruising around the house and you have instant soundtrack magic.
Everyday People by Sly
Family Stone Sweet Child of Mine by Sheryl Crow
Baby or Little Girls
Tupelo honey by Van Morrison by “She’s as sweet as Tupelo Honey” is all you need to know.
Blue Sky by The Allman Brothers
Rock-a-Hula Baby by Elvis Presley
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Five top point and click cameras for Fathers Day 2009
Here are five solid camera choices for Fathers Day 2009:
- For HD Lovers:
Canon PowerShot SD780 IS – Photos and HD Video. $280 - Birdwatchers and long-distance viewers:
Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 – Longest zoom for a point and shoot at 12X. $400 - Most portable:
Sony DSC-T700 Cyber-shot – Tiny and flat with 4GB of internal memory but only a 4X zoom. $400 - Most brand conscious:
Leica C-LUX 3 – It’s a Leica, and very good, but the price shows it. $600 - Budget conscious:
Nikon Coolpix S220 – Good basic camera, but don’t expect a lot of bells and whistles.
Biggest camera buying hint this year. Compare sensor size not megapixel quantity. That will determine the quality of the photo since all cameras are now made so you can blow up photos to larger sizes.
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Because Dads take different photos than Moms
Interesting article in Popular Photography on a study that shows that men and women, in eye-tracking studies, look at photos differently.
Our first question: Do men and women physically see the world differently?
There is some evidence that the answer might be yes.
A report from the Online Journalism Review made a splash in March 2007 when it reported an eye-tracking study that looked at where viewers glanced on a given news page on the web. When presented with an image of a figure, females most often looked at the face, while males focused both on the face and the crotch.
Funny enough for salacious blog posts, but the results may have been onto some serious differences in behavior. In 2000, Life Sciences published a Japanese eye-tracking study that found a marked difference between the gaze of adult men and women. When presented with an image, women looked for longer periods of time at fewer places, while men’s eyes moved more frequently over the image.
[From Do Men and Women Take Different Photos? - - PopPhotoJanuary 2009]
In big generalities, men tend to think in terms of physical dimensions, technical aspects and composition, while women look for the story. Maybe that’s why my wife, though she has a little point-and-shoot and has less technical “skill,” takes better photos than I do.
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Tips for creating a photo book of a baby’s first year
If you’re having a baby or just had one, now is the time to plan how you’ll catalog the baby’s first year’s development. We’ve covered video in other articles on GreatDad.com, but here are a few ideas and tips for photos;
1. Start early. You’ll want photos even before the baby is born, including of your wife’s stomach, and then in the delivery room. No one needs a lot of photos of a bloody baby, and within a few years, you’ll realize that you’ll be deleting photos showing your baby’s private parts.
2. Take lots of close-ups of chubby little baby hands and feet.
3. Find a place in the house like a big chair where you can take a picture every week or month to give some perspective on how much they’ve grown.
4. Consider a “day in the life” theme, taking pictures of the little things in their, and your, life.
5. Add photos on a regular basis a photo sharing site or Mac’s iPhoto so your project is largely done by the time you get to finishing if off in time for first year birthday presents
Remember also that first year baby books, while a souvenir artifact that will help your child understand their roots, is largely for you to look back on lovingly years from now when your kids are teenagers and you’re ready to send them to boarding school.
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