Video Log

Let the color’s continue… Funny how things never turn out exactly like you thought they would. Such is the live of a visual storyteller. Sometimes they turn out better! There are several colors left in my head to capture and share. Green came and went with the Spring weather. Summer is here and ripe with colors, white being one of my favorites. Initially I wanted to film the kite surfers against a white sky but just today decided to add some foreground elements to the shot. Boy am I glad I did. Anyway, just another in the line of colors and motion that I’ve been playing with.

On my way to NAB in Vegas, I had the bright idea of shooting the sunrise over the a “carpet of orange” at the Antelope Valley California Poppy Reserve SNR in Lancaster… Well, despite the warnings from their official site that peak has passed about two weeks earlier, I decided to give it a go, nonetheless. It seemed like a good plan, you know, like I did when I shot the sunrise about 20 years earlier when I was a photo student at Ventura College. That was a magical time, the poppies were in full bloom, the light was beautiful and a hot air balloon came up from the other side of the hill. Wow, what a shot! No problem, this time I’ll shoot it on video and make it even better… Boy, I couldn’t have been more wrong. What did I learn from this shoot… No need to invest that kind of time and energy if NOTHING is going to happen. I was lucky to get what I did.

There were several clips from my Sunday Sunrise Service shoot that I considered pulling for other reasons, this was kind of that. Before the service, I was playing with the overcranking feature of the EX1 camera and new that I would need some audio. So, I set the camera up to shoot/record the drum circle that was when I noticed some guy strining up a rope on a tree on the side of the hill. What was he doing? I waited to find out. Anyway, just for fun. Enjoy.

Put up or shut up…? Well, I can’t really be a video journalist if I don’t tell stories with a video camera and one of the best ways I can think to learn is to DO… So this morning I woke up early and went and did a piece on the Easter Sunrise Service at Lake Casitas Recreation Area. The people at the Ojai Valley Community Church were great to work with, giving me all the access and information I needed. A few hours (and 40 minutes of footage) later, I fueled up with coffee and spent the next three hours cutting a 1:20 short. I’ve sent it to my friends at the Star to see if they want it for their Website, www.venturacountystar.com and will then cut a longer version for the OVCC for their site. Glad it’s done… now it’s time to enjoy Easter.

David LaBelle and I spent an afternoon last month chasing the light, looking for image to capture for his stock photography business, Native Son Stock. The site, created by David, features images exclusivly from Ventura County and has contributions from other local photographers including myself and Eric Parsons. On this outing, David and I drove around, intially chasing a rainbow, but ended up near Lake Casitas outside of Oak View capturing light, clouds, mountains and the clean air.

The weather has been beautiful lately, certainly great light and USUALLY great sunsets. However, this past month, despite the low altitude snow and great light, the sunsets have been less than impressive. I’ve set up a few times this past week to catch the golden light over the valley and have come away being very disappointed with the lack of stellar beauty I have come to expect with an Ojai Valley sunset. Nonetheless, on one of these outings recently I set up in the parking lot of my alma matter, Nordhoff High School hoping the clouds would part and show me the Topatopa bluffs over the East side of the Valley. No go. However, it wasn’t a total loss, I ended up shooting clouds, the wind and the trees around the stadium. The audio was the happy surprise with this piece. Hope you enjoy.

This one was just for fun. Shot on my Canon SD1000, I wanted to cut a short piece but ended up with this 11 minute version for my mom and our family. Good chance I’ll cut a much smaller version but just not this morning. We’ve been going to the dog park at Soule in Ojai for the past month or so (pending decent weather). I have some ideas on shooting stories up here but this was just for fun.

Last night I went looking for locations to shoot the sunset somewhere in Ventura. My idea was to shoot the setting light falling while the city lights started to come to life. Despite giving myself an hour or so to scout locations, nothing really panned out, so I drove to Surfer’s Point, Seaside Park in Ventura. I set up my D200 for a time lapse (1 frame every 10 seconds for an hour, give you 10 seconds of video) with the composition towards the sun. Well, the batter died on the camera about 5/6 of the way through the shoot so I packed that up, turned around and noticed how beautiful the sky was and then… the Moon! The way the clouds were dancing around the sky in front of the moon was stunning. Dragged out the video camera, shot a quick clip and called it a night.

The weather lately around So Cal, you’d think the Earth was that much closer to the Sun… So Dang Hot! So what do I do, I make my way down to the beach, no, not to swim, surf or tan, but shoot Video. I’ve been giving this project a lot of thought lately… mainly my approach to using the video like I would a still image. However, audio has driven my choices more so than the color. It seems I can find a decent color to shoot anywhere but finding good audio to stream with the video is important to me… my goal is to keep the integrity of the captured natural sound with that video clip. My biggest challenge lately has been to shoot away from a well-traveled highway with no traffic sounds. No problem with this clip.

My Mom and the matriarch of the family dogs Angel asked that I take five-month Cooper off their hands so the two ladies could have some ‘girl’ time. After lounging around my house for the morning, we drove over to Camino Real Park in Ventura to visit the dog park. Cooper had gone to the dog park at Soule Park in Ojai the day previous with my Mom. She said that he had a good time and that I should have been there with my video camera. Can’t recreate the past so I decided to try some on my own. He had a blast, once he realized that the other creatures there were dogs like he (the four-legged variety) and that they other humans there were not his family… we had a good time. This is just a clip from our outing.