The Movie Producer

Long, long ago (fifty years ago!), when this blogger first started to travel, I had a film camera.  Before going on a trip, I would buy plenty of rolls of Kodachrome and Ektachrome film. (Are you old enough to remember those brand names from Kodak?). Upon returning, I would go to the camera store and have the film processed into slides.  Over the years I accumulated thousands of slides.  My friends would come to the house for slide shows, and my poor students would have to watch slides of Mexico, Spain, and South America.  Much later, I got a camcorder, and sometimes I would do multimedia shows with slides on the screen synchronized with the VHS tape shown on the TV. 

Film photography started to disappear with the advent of digital cameras. I was a dinosaur, kicking and screaming that slides were much better than digital images.  Finally, a couple years before I started this blog in 2013, I relented and bought a digital camera.  Although I do sometimes miss projecting my slides on a large screen, I have to admit that digital photography has many advantages for the traveler.  I don't have to haul a couple dozen rolls of film with me in a bulky camera bag when I travel.  I don't have to carefully ration how many photos I take.  I can snap away without worrying about running out of film.

After a trip I made to Mexico City in November of 2011, for the first time I used a "video studio" program on my desktop to create a slideshow burned onto a DVD.  I even included background music on the disc.  I now have a library of 63 discs from my travels.

I am bringing this up, because last night I finished the DVD slideshow of my latest trip to Mexico City.  During the five weeks that I was down there I took more than 1400 photographs and videos.  I narrowed that down to around 500 of the best pictures.  Even that was too much for one disc, so I have a two-volume set of "Mexico City: October - November, 2022".

Yes, I am fully aware that DVDs are becoming obsolete, and that the discs eventually degrade.  According to what I have read, they last about 45 years, which means I should be able to enjoy my travel photos for the rest of my lifetime... that is, as long as they continue to make DVD players.