Go Fly a Kite

Wayne Evans flying at Blackheath

Do you remember a TV commercial a few years ago which asked the question, "Can you persuade your children that you were young once?" The response was, "Canon can." It wasn't a bad ad and they made a good point.

But we're no longer as young as we used to be, our bodies don't function quite as well as in the past, even though our minds might still be nimble. So perhaps the question might be, "Can you persuade your children that there's life in the old folk yet?" And the answer to that one is, "Photo Story 3 can." I'll get to that in a minute.

This is not a story about hang gliding; it's an information piece to tell you about a new Microsoft freebie that you can use to bring your photographs to life. And, yes, as you guessed it's called Photo Story 3. I'm simply using hang gliding as a platform to show you some of the things you can do with it.

Two years ago my wife Lynne and I went hang gliding with our son, Neil, at Rylstone. The local airstrip is in flat country and the only way to get airborne is to be towed up. This can be done with a winch and a very long cable, or by hitching a ride behind an ultralight aircraft. At Rylstone we were towed up behind a Dragonfly flown by the man accredited with inventing the sport—"Bird Man Bill" Moyes.

In my first attempt at using Photo Story 3 I selected some of the photographs taken at Rylstone, added some captions, background music, scrolling variations, and threw them all into my cauldron. I stirred the potion while muttering mysterious incantations and waited for the software to work it's magic. When it was done, I uploaded it to YouTube where you can view it direct by CLICKING ON THIS LINK, or you can see the embedded video at the bottom of this page. These files are also small enough to send by e-mail (the hang gliding story was 3.5Mb) although if your friends are still using dial-up they might not thank you for monopolising their in-box. Alternatively you can upload the story to YouTube yourself so that you only have to send them a link.

One of the things I failed to make use of with my hang gliding photo story was to record voice on it. The program permits you to record a narrative with the story but, due to a technical glitch, I haven't yet been able to do that. When I resolve the problem I'll re-do the video and update this story.

You can download Photo Story 3 by clicking this link. This site also has links to tips on how to use the program. If you have any interest in digital photography I'd strongly recommend that you try it out.

Ain't competition great? Google have got so far ahead of Microsoft in the battle for the Internet that Microsoft are now forced to try to take them on at their own game—in their own dojo, so to speak—and there are going to be more free programs that are just as useful as this one.

Oh, yeah! There's one other thing I forgot to mention. It's fun.

              —David Evans