In the past few weeks I’ve been pondering my strengths and weaknesses. As a result, one immediate and unimportant change has been my deletion of my personal Twitter account. I might have followed 11 people, several of whom stopped posting months ago, and maybe four people followed me. I seldom Tweeted.
More consequential might be my thoughts about videography. I am a competent videographer, but simply don’t have the resource or the motivation to commit myself to making videos, and I don’t want to be a vlogger/vidiot who posts 32 minute rants of myself talking to the camera. I see too much of that, and despise it.
I certainly don’t want to become what I despise.
Since acquiring my first video camera in 2001, the excellent Canon GL-1, I have attempted to integrate video into my web presence, and after all these years I have concluded it’s just not for me. That might change one day if I got a job in the field or could generate tons of income from it, but today, my best videos are just a distraction. I am pretty sure my readership feels the same way: Richard is a great photographer and a good storyteller, but his videos don’t match up.
I have also said in past entries that as video resolution increases, quality falters, and that almost all video is worthless without the most important element: a good script.
So, if you are patrolling richardbarron.net and see a link to a video that doesn’t exist, or see any empty links at all, let me know and I’ll fix it.
“I certainly don’t want to become what I despise.”
What an important statement — the fact that you wrote this will probably inspire a long and rambling future blog entry from me in the future…
“I don’t want to be a vlogger/vidiot who posts 32 minute rants of myself talking to the camera. I see too much of that…”
This right here. It’s the number one reason I (almost) never click on the link when someone links to YouTube and says “watch this and tell me what you think”.
“Richard is a great photographer and a good storyteller, but his videos don’t match up.”
Your typical videos are (my opinion) far better than the average internet videographer — you have a theme, a discernible vision, and they’re usually brief. However, the way you stated it IS technically true. Your photographs are so astounding that by comparison your videography is in second place.
***
Personal rambling: While I do sometimes record a video, it’s never about creating art; it’s similar to my photography vision, which is creating points that Future Wil can use as time travel destinations. Very occasionally, I find that video records something that photos can’t — the sound of my developing child’s voice, for example.
But video is simply not for me, for a variety of reasons, some of them boringly practical: (1) storage space, (2) time investment in recording/uploading/editing — compared to the much smaller time investment for photos, (3) Editing! I have tried and failed to find good video editing software. Both free and paid software have disappointment me. (4) Audio copyright: according to YouTube’s algorithms, almost every possible audible sound is copyrighted.