Then the lockdowns happened, vacations turned into staycations and the camera ended up living in a drawer. (Anyone trying to buy a game console for the last year understands this pain.)īefore the pandemic upended our lives, my wife bought a DSLR, the type of digital camera used by professionals, with the goal of learning more about digital photography. That’s because we are living in a pandemic-induced era of scarcity driven by a global chip shortage and supply chain disruptions that have made conventional gifts difficult to buy. This type of gifting exercise - tech-adjacent presents that don’t involve hardware or thoughtless Best Buy gift cards - may be especially welcome this year. That’s more than I can say about other tech gifts that I’ve received over the years, such as video games and smart speakers, which only brought short-lived joy. It makes me smile and is always a conversation starter when we have guests over. I liked it so much that I picked a background color that would complement our home and uploaded the illustration to the app Keepsake, a printing service that assembles your images in a nice frame before delivering it to your door.Ī large, framed portrait of Max now hangs as a centerpiece in our living room in all its two-dimensional glory. Using Procreate, a drawing app, she loaded a photo of our beloved corgi, Max, as a reference to trace over before embellishing the image with a polka-dot bow tie and a cartoonishly long tongue. It’s not even a gadget, though it was made with technology.Ī few years ago, my wife experimented with her iPad and a digital stylus to make digital illustrations.

My favorite holiday tech gift doesn’t require batteries or software updates.

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