March 5 - Lisa's Musings From Every Day Life

I'm trying to figure out how to shoot (and then edit) video to go with my news stories.

This wasn't my idea, I promise you.

I am so techno stupid that it took me two years to really get the hang of how to take a nice photo with "My Baby," a.k.a. my sweet and wonderful digital camera.

And, this only happened with a lot of hand's on help from a very patient AA News Photo Chief Bruce Shields and on the job assistance from several of the professional photographers at the paper who took pity on me.

So, I embraced my dear, dear "Baby," and learned how to be a photo journalist and she made me shine.

Truth be told, she STILL does.

She's so forgiving and saves me from myself.

Plus, in the beginning, as I was getting used to her, I had a default (idiot's) setting I could use. This magical setting made me look like I knew what I was doing for a good long while -- as I faked my way through a lot of assignments.

You see, new technology and I take a long, long time to become good friends -- we have to feel each other out, and get to know each other's strengths and weaknesses.

New computers and their programs, photography, depth of field and all the other stuff one has to figure out before you can toss caution to the wind and trust your gut to just go for it in the newspaper business.

So, now that it's been smooth sailing in the photosphere, another new piece of technology has splash landed.

And I need to learn how to use it.

I've attended two "Webinars," in the last few days, in a new age of cyberspace learning.

No one-on-one sessions with books and conference rooms and blackboards.

This week I logged onto some secret space and then made a bat cave phone call and without me touching my computer words and pictures popped up on it -- like there was an invisible hand controlling my destiny.

Which, I guess, there is.

Big Brother was not only watching, but also manipulating my comfortable little reality.

Wish me luck as a venture into yet another Brave New World.