I seem to start a lot of these blogs with "Can You Believe ..." and this post is no different. Can you believe that we are nearly 6 months into 2017 already!? This Friday see's me flying back to South Africa for another wedding, this time for my Sister-in-Laws wedding. Unfortunately its going to be another short trip, just 9 days, which is the same amount of time that I went back for in March.
This trip is going to be a little different from my March trip, that trip was all documented on 35mm 'Analogue' film. I have developed some of the black and white film myself and will put up a blog post with those images and thoughts soon. But on this trip I am endeavouring to film this trip and make a movie out of it. I have made vlogs about my travels before, I actually did my first attempt at some vlogging on my first trip to the Philippines.
But it wasn't until my first trip to the US that I started doing daily vlogs about what I was up to, and I've been documenting my travels since then. Speaking of which ... I still have to finish my videos from Europe earlier this year.
I have tried to 'Up' the production value of my videos as I have continued to produce these videos, and I am my own worst enemy when I feel like I am not producing good enough content. I can get despondent and loose the desire to work on it, it's not a good quality I have but I'm trying to change that. Now to combat not getting despondent over my work I am trying to pre-plan the video.
With my increasing desire to make videos, I have learnt that 'running and gunning' can sometimes leave you wanting, in terms of the content that can be used. Its not something that I have to worry about when it comes to my photography, it's a lot easier to make a single frame engaging, compared to a 5-10 minute video. A lot more thought needs to be put in to what goes into video, we live in a society today that is so over saturated with content, that being able to engage with an audience, and keep their attention, is becoming harder and harder. But that's a deeper and more thoughtful topic for another day.
I've bought a few new pieces of equipment that I will be using on this trip, a camera slider and a couple neutral density filters to keep that lovely "bokeh" look to the video I'll be creating.
So keep an eye out for that video, check out my instagram account @optic_canvas for my video based content.
Mike.