Still in Seattle

I have decided to stay in Seattle and not venture out on my own for a variety of reasons. But I did not spend much time shooting either over the last two days or so. Instead, I was trying to focus on getting more sound bites and interview pieces from the boys for my slideshow. In addition, the daily life routine sets in now and I feel that it is time to wrap up this part of the project (I intend to follow the young family over the next few years as a long-term project).

As I am not so experienced with editing sound, I was experimenting with various pieces of software and ended up with Apple’s GarageBand, which seems to work nicely. For one thing, you can have various tracks and edit them separately and for another you can export the resulting sound file to an mp3 format, which in turn can be imported in iView Media Pro for the slideshow. But I am still learning how to use it. I have not figured out yet how to fade in and out sound and adjust the volume of the various tracks so that they fit together.

I have also spent a good amount of time editing my images and have now edited them down to about 150 images. I like the shot that I have posted here – it shows Peter and Frans feeding their babies in the Northwest lounge in Detroit, waiting for our connecting flight to Seattle – although it is flawed on a technical level: it is shot (deliberately) against the sun and has resulting lens flare. I have a few similar shots of the same scene without the technical flaws, which are not nearly as exciting – in my opinion. I have been experimenting with these kinds of shots lately (for example the shot I have done in the Black Forest over Christmas was using the same approach) and have always been keen to see what the lens flare would be.

As I said, I will probably wrap up soon and leave Seattle…