Mar 2

Mar 2 Video - PhotoWalk Diary: Snow Day

Yesterday, I posted a collection of photos that I took around the local area following a rare snowfall here in Dublin. When I was shooting those, I had also filmed my progress with a GoPro mounted in the Camera’s hot-shoe. After a day of editing, I cut down the 50 minutes of footage into a video, and it’s the start of a new series I’m planning to do on my YouTube channel: “Photo Walk Diary”.

Photo Walk Diary is going to be the next iteration of what I was previously trying to do with my Street Photo Dairy series. I changed the name so as to be less limiting, and I may just use this from now on. Anyway, distractions aside, I’m really happy with how this turned out, even though it is a little experimental.

I mentioned at the start of the year that I wanted to try and focus a bit more on the artistic and philosophical side of photography, and so this video is a little more of that. I added some personal thoughts and musings about my photography as a voice over. I’m not sure how well this will be received, but I’m happy with the results.

For those interested in the technical details of how I put this together, the video was shot using a GoPro Hero 5 session, mounted in the hot-shoe of the camera I was using to take the photos, in this case, my trusty Nikon D700. The reasons that I chose to shoot with the D700 were twofold. First of all, I have a better set of lenses for it than any of my mirrorless cameras, and I wanted the flexibility of the 24-120 that I use. Secondly, I find it easier to use with gloves than any of my mirrorless cameras. I also just like it.

I edited the video in FCPx. I will do a tutorial sometime on how I put these together, as I have developed a few of my own techniques for making the process a bit quicker. The sound from the GoPro was pretty poor because it was windy, and so I had to re-create a lot of the sound using sound effects.

The photos themselves, some of which I shared yesterday, were processed in Lightroom. I used my own Industrial Iron Lightroom presets on some of these to give them a stylised look.

I’m constantly trying to improve and learn and this video was a learning process for me. I think I’m getting more experienced at this, and I like how this came together, and I hope you will too. If you did like it, please give the video a like on YouTube and subscribe to my channel. This isn’t for some sort of self-gratification either, it helps the video get found by others, and it also helps me know what people like and don’t like.