Thanksgiving Dinner: Another Example of How I Use Notebooks and Gadgets

I went to my grandmother’s house yesterday for dinner and brought my new MacBook Pro along with me to share some videos of family and friends eulogizing my grandfather, who passed away on Halloween.

I recorded the entire memorial using my Canon Vixia HF100 and interviewed attendees, asking them to share stories about my grandfather. I used iMovie to splice the interviews together and iDVD put together menus and burn the discs.

After dinner I took out my MacBook Pro to show my dad what I’d put together earlier in the day and the entire family gathered around to watch the videos.

Some of the stories brought tears to our eyes, but we spent most of the next hour smiling and laughing as we remembered Grandpa’s long life and re-heard stories and a couple of performances from the services.

Later I showed a video I put together seven years ago of my grandparents talking about the good old days and what it was like to raise six children.

I’ve probably had a camera on my person more often than not since I was 10 years old.My friends and family sometimes get annoyed by all of my gadgets and cameras that I carry around, but it’s moments like the one in the above photo that make all the geeking out 100% worth it.

I take tons of photos and shoot videos at the typical life events- birthday parties, anniversaries, weddings, etc-, but some of the most memorable pics and videos I’ve taken have been in unusual settings such as hospitals when family member have been very ill, casual get togethers with friends and even funerals.

If you want to build a very “rich” photo and video library it’s important to shoot as much as possible in situations where a camera might seem out of place. I’ve had people give me weird looks when I’m carting around a bag full of gadgets at events, but I’ve never had a single complaint when I show them my results.

Thankfully, my family’s mostly comes to understand my gadget obsession.