Bangkok
Thailand
July 7, 2008

Dear Friends and Photography Fiends,

Before I left Bangkok for Sumatra , I decided to take a peek, finally, at the Advanced User Guide to my digital camera.

I leafed through the pages and lit upon "Photo Stitch."

I focused on the directions but with only modest comprehension. I also needed to find the disk that came with the camera, two years ago! I found the disk. I loaded the program.

Here's the way it works: you shoot a series of photos of the same wide subject with each shot slightly overlapping the previous shot. Then you import the shots into your computer and the Photo Stitch program performs as you would expect. Your shots are stitched together, seamlessly.

It's a miracle.

All of this depends on whether you remember to make the proper setting on the camera in the first place.

I rehearsed from the rooftop of my apartment building.

I tried again at the Bangkok Airport.

In Sumatra it was "Showtime."

My modest comprehension produced modest results.

Uriah! I am too humble. There are only a few photos but they are fabulous.

When I write my memoirs I will compose a chapter called "Important: Read the Damn Directions."

Smile, 1-2-3.

Rest easy, Alfred.

Oh-so-well-stitched,

Power Shot Jan

PS I will be quite immersed in serious research for the next few days. I am in the dark so I am allocating all of my waking hours to panning through the unopened User's Guide for that Nokia gizmo I bought three months ago.

Please call me. I think there's a vibrate function.