One of the great things about digital cameras is that most models also take "mini" digital videos. Over the years the quality of video that many of these cameras can take has increased dramatically. 30 frames per second, MPEG 4 compression, and good sound quality has made taking mini videos a great experience. I've found that taking snippets of video adds to the sharing and re-living of any experience. The small sizes of digital cameras make it significantly easier to capture mini video than larger dedicated video cameras. They are easy to view either on your camera, computer or TV.

Take a sweeping view of a street corner in Xiamen China and experience the sights and sounds.

A still photo of the life size Tyrannosaurus rex in the Toys R Us store in Times Square, New York City is amazing, but my kids go nuts when they see and hear it come alive on video.

Re-experience the "drop" down the water flume at Busch Gardens.

My mini videos have become one of my most favorite ways of re-living memorable experiences.

'Tis the season for making holiday cards. Once you start having kids holiday cards turn into the obligatory photo greeting cards. There are lots of great resources for creating your own cards online and it's become extremely easy to upload your own photos to create beautiful custom Holiday cards.

I love to draw and edit photos on the computer so I like creating my own custom cards. I usually print the cards out as traditional photo prints, however this year with so many easy options I might try a photo card. Creating our own Holiday cards has become something of a Lautenslager holiday tradition (each year occurring later and later and thus becoming increasingly stressful - the perfect holiday tradition!). We usually brainstorm with the kids around what kind of scene they would like to be in and then setup our photos in our family room. For this card, from last year, the kids wanted to be inside of a snow globe catching snowflakes. Separating the kids for the photo shoot and "reuniting" them in Photoshop keeps everyone happy and makes life significantly easier!

Once you have your photos the real fun begins. First I need to "cut out" the kids from the family room background in Photoshop.

Now I need to draw the snow globe. I do this either in Photoshop or Illustrator. Add the kids, some details and snow and we are almost done.

For the final step I compose the card, draw in the last bits of detail, adding shadows, some pine sprigs, a few snowflakes and a holiday greeting and we are done!

Time to get started on this year's card.

One of the things I enjoy about working in digital is restoring old photographs. My Great Uncle, Percy Tuttle, was a pilot in World War I (his father was the photographer Hammond Tuttle who I wrote about in an earlier blog on panoramic photos). Growing up I remember looking through Uncle Percy's pile of old brittle and yellowed photographs from 1917. They are an amazing window into the word of early aviation. These photos were taken less then fifteen years after the Wright Brother's first flight! The airplanes pictured here are the French Caudron G3 and a Curtiss HS-1L flying boat. Glenn Curtiss developed and flew the first flying boat in Hammondsport, New York, about an hour away from Rochester.

One of the challenges of restoring old photographs is not to over-correct them. In many ways, it's like restoring an old antique, you want to clean it up but not add a new finish. Working in Adobe Photoshop, I usually adjust the levels, remove dust and scratch marks and try to bring the balance back to a more original looking black and white or sepia image. It's tempting to use tools that over sharpen or increase contrast, but that can often degrade the overall quality of the photo.

Digitizing (scanning) old photographs and scrapbooks also gives them new life. It's a great way to archive and protect old images and it also creates new opportunities for sharing via blogs or email.

For over fifteen years I've been a participating artist with the United States Air Force Art Program.

The program was created to document the story of the Air Force through art and has been in place since the early fifties. Air Force Artists are invited to spend time with units from around the world and experience first hand the various mission's of the Air Force.

Taking photographs are an important element to these trips. Most of the photos I take are pieces and parts of aircraft that I later use as reference for my paintings. However, I also try to capture the atmosphere and mood of the location or Unit. These photos are from a trip to Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi where The 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron, known as the Hurricane Hunters, are stationed.

The stormy backdrops of many of the photos adds drama to the images and are certainly appropriate for an aircraft whose job it is to fly into hurricanes! Tragically, less then a year later, Hurricane Katrina would devastate the Biloxi, Mississippi area. Kessler suffered almost $1 billion in damages but is back in operations today.

All of these photos were taken with a Canon EOS Digital Rebel with a 24mm and 70-300mm zoom lens. For the ultimate in aviation photos check out Airliners.net

Over one million users submitted aviation photographs!

There's something about the wide sweeping view of a panoramic scene that gives an image of drama and grandeur. Panoramic photography has been around for a long time. My Great Grandfather was a professional photographer (Circa 1900) and took panoramic photos in Upstate New York.

For 40 years, the Kodak Colorama in New York's Grand Central Terminal stood as a landmark for photography and the company. The Colorama's were 18 feet high and 36 feet wide! The first Colorama's were captured with an 8X10 view camera.

Today I make panoramic photos with my digital camera. The Kodak V570 has a built in feature that "stitches" three images together automatically. After each shot, a small slice of the previous shot stays on the display and all you do is line up the past image slice with the next shot. When you're done the camera runs an algorithm that aligns all three images into one seamless panoramic picture. It's very cool and fun to play with.

Get creative and take three successive images that are not panoramic and see how they get stitched together.

I think my Great Grandfather would be amazed.

As many of my friends know, I love airplanes and whether it's by nature or nurture my four-year-old son Reed loves airplanes too. Lately his favorite airplane is the SR-71 Blackbird. It's probably because one of his airplane videos shows a SR-71 with lots of fire coming out the back.

When you're four, there's nothing better then a jet that shoots fire out the back.

This year our annual Outer Banks summer vacation took us through the Northern Virginia Dulles area where there just happens to be the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center. This is the new annex to the Air & Space Museum in Washington D.C. The Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center is a beautiful museum and features the Boeing Aviation Hanger, a huge building housing hundreds of aircraft. One of the centerpiece aircraft of the museum is the SR-71! Reed was excited and of course I was too.

I had a Kodak V570 with me, a small compact digital camera that has a wide-angle lens and panoramic stitching feature. I will talk more about panoramic stitching in future blogs. Conditions were difficult: A seven-hour car ride, two tired kids, a McDonald's looming in the food court and of course the SR-71 (a completely black aircraft).

The Boeing Aviation hanger is a large dark space with bright windows on each end. The small flash of a compact digital camera just doesn't provide the fill lighting needed for such an open space. I tried my best to steady the camera as well as play with the ISO settings. What ISO controls is how sensitive the image sensor is to the amount of light present. The higher the ISO the more sensitive the image sensor becomes giving you the capability to take pictures in low-light situations. This can be tricky though because a higher ISO often creates more "noise" within an image.

I didn't get technically good pictures, but when your four years old, a picture of you and a SR-71 is a great one and that's really what photography is all about. I printed out the panoramic image and it now hangs in Reeds room. It's pretty cool.

If you are ever in the Dulles Virginia area, the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center is definitely worth the stop and you too can see the SR-71.