Aloha from Hawaii (Kodak Blog, November 16, 2006)

NOTE: This is a “reprint” of my blog post to Kodak’s previous “A Thousand Words” blog.

I used to go on vacation, take lots of pictures, buy some postcards and send them to friends and family. Last week, when I was on vacation in Hawaii, I still took lots of pictures, but the “postcards” I sent out were not so traditional. I did send one postcard via surface mail, but it was created from a digital picture. I took my memory card to a “one-hour” photo place, popped it into a kiosk, selected a few photos to print, and for 25 cents a print, I had a few fun pics to share. I then bought photo postcard backings, which I used to turn one of my photos into a postcard. Just peel and stick… and presto, instant photo postcard!

sunset

I had my wireless EasyShare One camera with me so I could share pictures with others — directly from my camera. One evening after dinner, we were relaxing on lounge chairs by the pool and I started looking back at some of our pictures from our trip so far. I picked a few sunset, scenic and silly shots, grouped them into an album on the camera, popped up the Wi-Fi card, and shared the pics with a few family members back home — right then and there! Here’s a picture of me giving the thumbs up as the pics are being uploaded. It was actually faster and easier than the photo postcard I made! You can see all of the pictures that I uploaded here.

thumbs up

Finally, I had my new camera phone with me – a Sony Ericsson W810i. It has a 2 Megapixel camera built-in! I did not have email set up on that phone, so I did not send any pics directly from the phone, but I did capture a few shots. I’ll include a couple of pics here so that you can see how camera phone technology is really coming along.

camera phone palm tree camera phone sunset

How about you? What kind of non-traditional “postcards” do you send while on vacation these days? How do you share your pictures from the road?

Posted in kodak_blog, photography, travel.