Saturday, June 23, 2007

Digital Photography for Seniors - by Ed Dunnett

One of the interests I have developed, in the last three years, is to work with digital photography. In particular I am looking to produce different types of outputs particularly for people who are not inclined to use computers and high technology to gain access to photos. Seniors are often included in this group.

What this involves is taking digital photos of special events like weddings, important travel and graduations, doing them up into photomontages using image enhancing software and then selecting a number of output options for displaying these montages. This can include laminating the photomontages into placemats for the dinner table or preparing laminated posters for wall display. More recently I have tried preparing slideshows on dvds. These can be shown on television via a dvd player. To make things easier for the user I always choose the option of “no menu”. This means the dvd will play as soon as it is inserted in the dvd player and will continue until “the door is opened” again.
These seem to be working quite well. Although I still find that receiving a package of snaps by mail is still the most popular for my 90 year old father in law.
Ed Dunnett

2 comments:

  1. Thanks, Ed, for sharing some of the results of your very creative efforts to "think outside the box" so that elders who feel like they are outsiders technologically can climb into the box (or at least lift the lid and peer in). For example, you figured out a way to eliminate the menu-choice step on a video DVD. I've watched how much of a barrier this is, because it involves figuring out more buttons. It is much more likely that the video or slideshow, that I'm trying to share, will be fired up -- if it is a simply a matter of opening and closing the disk drawer.

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  2. I have observed which of the outputs has the most lasting benefit. The placemats do sit on my dad's table and do trigger conversations. Once he asked who one person was and I said, "that is your grandson David, dad, he has grown a beard". Once the placemats get too old, they are terrific drawer liners.

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