(written by Dave)
In over 550 days of travel, I’ve taken lots of photographs (some days more than necessary if you ask my editor). I’m not really sure of the exact total trip photo count. My camera doesn’t seem to have a history feature. It has a counter it uses to name the photo file which counts to 10,000 and then restarts. I’m pretty sure that it has reached 10,000 at least 5 times on the trip so that would mean something over 50,000 photos to date. I delete a lot of the photos when I go through them at the end of nearly every day, another task that my editor occasionally thinks I spend too much time on. I often take multiple photos of things to make sure that I get a good photo and I “only” have 17,000 photos currently stored on our PC hard drive, not 50,000.
Still, 17,000 is a lot of photos. I’m not sure what we’ll ever do with all of them. I’ve been trying to go through them and pick out good ones for a slide show or video but this is painfully slow. I use Picasa (from Google) and it helps. I’ve also been trained well by the LWOP chief organizer (also the chief editor) and have everyday’s photos in a separate folder so it is easy to sort by folder name. The trouble is that going day by day I see photos that I’d forgotten about that often lead me down random memory lane exercise. Never mind how difficult it is to pick the best 150 or so photos from 17,000. After culling a week’s worth of photos I have 50 photos. If I keep going at this rate, I’ll have a slide show that is about 4,000 photos long. Pity the poor friends and family that have to sit through that show.
Faced with the overwhelming task of picking highlight photos, I decided to drop back and pick my favourite “people” photos. This was a little easier. I still ended up with 250 photos. This was too many for a video so I culled a little more. The collage below is some of the best 150, the link below that is to the video that I’ve published on YouTube. This is our first published video so I’m not sure that we’ve done it correctly. If you see issues with the video let me know. It seems that the speed of your Internet connect will determine how the video looks. Anyway, if the video doesn’t work at all, think of it as a teaser for when we see you next time – we’ll set up the big screen, grab a bag of popcorn and settle in for the weekend in your lounge room.
NOTE: we’ve added a normal blog slide show below by request so readers could look at the pictures at their own pace.
LWOP People
Leave Without Pay 
hi dave and nancy, i have not posted for a while but i have been reading your daily posts, amazingly you both are still on the road and going strong. May i suggest your next project is to publish a travel book/ebook. I think you have enough photos and quips to make your publication different from all those out there. Whose photobook ever has shots or comments about squatting toilets!
Thanks for the encouragement. You never know, if I can’t find a job I may just do that! One of my favourite photos is of you guys.
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Love the song choice—very appropriate for the amazing mix of people you’ve met on your journey. My favorites are the oldest and youngest of the bunch–beautiful faces at both ends of the spectrum.
YOU GUYS ARE AWESOME – WHAT A HISTORY LESSON FOR ME. I WISH I COULD HAVE MET YOU IN FRANCE — MY HOME COUNTRY – GOOD LUCK IN YOUR NEXT ENDEAVOUR …
David.. I love thepictures… is there any way to slow them down while watching ??? they are great and i would like to enjoy them more… thanks, ap ate some of Alice’s applesauce tonight… so GOOD hope she has some for you when you get home..
Good job on the slide show. We recognized one of the fellow bikers that was in the presentation, Jan.
That’s pretty amazing. To think that you happened to cross paths with Jan (I’m guessing in Asia somewhere), then maybe 6 months later, we cross paths with him as he entered Australia. We shared a sausage sizzle with him in Hayes Creek on Northern Territory Day. Good memories.
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Please tell me that you added in some new photos cause I don’t remember some of these and I’d hate to think I missed some interesting places!
So far I’ve saved 17,000 photos from the trip. I can’t post every photo every day and sometimes those that I haven’t posted catch my eye when I go back and review the folders. Most of those in the video were posted. But then again, it has been 1.5 years, maybe your memory isn’t what it used to be 🙂
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Great photos and fun watching them both with the music and slower on here (albeit backwards for your trip and compared to the You Tube post). THANKS! I agree with the comment about the faces. Some of them really speak to me…. some are such happy children and some are amazing older folks and some in the middle aren’t too bad either!!!!