Today we spent the day over in Sunnyvale (Silicon Valley) running errands and visiting our old friends in the area. Haven't seen Alex & Nadine in about six years, and their son is now a boy of nine! He and Emma had a raucous good time laying waste to their house, while the adults caught up.

But it wasn't a highly "bloggable" day so I thought I'd take the opportunity to answer the most common questions I've been getting lately about photos:

Q: What cameras do you use?

A: We shoot with two cameras, a Nikon D70 (digital SLR, 6 megapixels), and a Kodak DC3400 (digicam, 2.1 megapixels). The Nikon does all the heavy lifting, and the Kodak is primarily Emma’s camera, but Eleanor borrows the Kodak for family photos. I also prefer the Kodak for bad environmental conditions, like blowing sand and salt on the beach.

Q: Do you do any post-processing?

A: No. I don’t have any post-processing software, and if I did, I wouldn’t have time to use it. I barely have time to shoot, sort, and post them on the Internet as it is.

Q: Do you shoot at higher resolution than you post on the web? I’d like to use one of your photos as my desktop, or print it.

A: The Nikon photos are shot at 3000x2000 pixels. I upload them to the Flickr Photo Album at 800x600 because otherwise it would take too long. But once in a while I post a picture at full resolution so you can have it for your computer desktop, or make a nice print. When I do, I’ll put the tag “desktop” in the Photo Album description on Flickr, so you can find it.

Q: How do I see a higher resolution image than I see on the blog?

A: Everything is stored in the Photo Album. Click on the “Photo Album” link, or visit www.flickr.com/photos/airstreamlife . Once you are there, click on any picture for a larger version. For most, you can click again on a link to the lower right corner of the page which says, “See different sizes.” This will give you some options.

Q: Can I use your photo for (fill in the blank)?

A: All my photos are licensed under a Creative Commons "Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License." This means you can feel free to download the photos and use them for non-commercial purposes, with credit to Airstream Life magazine. For commercial use, contact me.

Q: How do you get such great photos?

A: (1) Shoot a lot. (2) Know the camera. (3) Travel to beautiful places (4) Delete most of what you shoot. ;-)