Blog

It’s been quiet around here, largely because I’ve been running around on a couple of things, including taking (not teaching) a workshop in video making. Sometimes, real life gets in the damn way of blogging…like the old days, when we all had lives that didn’t involve screens. I remember those days….

Anyway, I’ve been working hard to produce this mini documentary, about one of the villages in Southwest England where my mother’s branch of the family hails from, and the problems the local fishermen are facing.

It was supposed to be a vacation, but when I ran into Bill Cowan, a retired fisherman whom I first photographed back in 1992 (when he was 70!) on the streets of the village for an Islands Magazine assignment. We got to talking, and of course,  I broke out the gear and started filming. Here’s Bill in ’92:

The video is edited by my buddy John Campbell from Echo Media. John has the great ability to take my blather and my video and make it into a story. When I grow up, I want to be able to do what he does. Who knows, maybe Final Cut X will help me there. 

It’s shot mainly with the Nikon D7000, but I also used the Sony NEX VG 10 and the little Sony NEX 5. The slider shots are all with the little Sony….with my lightweight tripod and head, and small slider, the NEX 5 is about as heavy a camera as you’d want to put on that setup. 

It’s all APS-C chip sized video, and it’s all good (well, the Sony’s are super susceptible to moire, and they record in the dreaded AVCHD format, but basically, it’s all good.).

You know my feelings about the NEX VG10 from the previous post, but I can’t say enough good things about the NEX 5—so compact, so full-featured, a full sized chip…it’s the compact camera Nikon and Canon should have made, um, ages ago. 

In the words of the great philosopher DeAndre Cole (as embodied by Kenan Thompson of SNL), “What’s up with that?