A shot of a jetty off a beach in Montauk, Long Island.

A macro: orange food on an orange plate.

Shot this photo on a whim during dinner a few nights ago. It is a macro closeup of lemon slices and mint leaves in a carafe of water. I think it turned out pretty well. Plus I find that macros spice up the average set of family & friend snapshots, giving people who view them something interesting to talk about (what is it, why did you take it, etc.)

If you have kids, you know that they are always creating art at home and bringing lots of projects home from school. The problem is, there's only so much space on the refrigerator door to display their latest creations. This fun project is a great way to save, share and show-off all your kids' artwork. I used my Lumix still camera to shoot some of the artwork my daughter has created over the past few years, uploaded them to the web and turned them into a nice animated video that I can share with my friends and family. I made the video with a free web service called Animoto (http://animoto.com) that not only sequences your still photos and adds lots of cool effects, but also includes a large library of music tracks that are rights-cleared for this type of use. On top of that, since my Viera HDTV has an SD slot, I can also view the photos on my television. It's like an interactive art show. My daughter loved seeing her art on the 'big screen.'