Acadia National Park – Conveying an Experience: Video Storytelling Part 2
The Challenge: Involving Viewers Through Panoramas, Time-Lapse and Video
In the last few blogs I discussed how I use traditional photography, panoramas and time-lapse movies to share the beauty of a place and/or experience. Video is the final technique we’ll discuss that’s a valuable addition to the visual storytellers toolbox for helping to share beauty and also a great way to involving viewers in an experience. Also, while photographs produced with digital and film cameras produce images of a moment in time and time-lapse movies show an event in compressed time, video shows viewers a complete event moment-by-moment as it actually happened.
I’m primarily a landscape photographer and don’t pretend to be a videographer–one who creates full length movies. Instead, on photo assignments like the one here at Acadia National Park, I use video to share and involve viewers in the beauty of a brief experience (usually 10-30 second). I find that short videos like this can quickly accomplish what’s often impossible with a photograph or time-lapse movie. As an added bonus, videos can also help involve viewers experience some of what they might have felt if they’d witnessed that event in person. As an example, water is perhaps the most visible and dramatic features at Acadia. Here, waves and tides can have a soothing and hypnotizing effect that can captivate the viewer, but they can also change surprisingly quick. Here is a video clip made along Acadia’s shoreline.
Click The Image to Watch This Video
Here’s another video example. Of the 2.5 million people who visit Acadia annually, most see the park from their car, a bus and/or during a walk along the park’s carriage trails. For a completely unique experience, you can also view the park from the air in a small plane or glider, or from the water on a ferry or water taxi service. Taking a plane ride over the park or a boat ride on any of the waters can be an exhilarating experience and provide a perspective that’s impossible to see from land. Click on the image below for video clip made during one of many sightseeing tours around the park offered by Winter Harbor Water Taxi and Tour Service.
Click The Image to Watch This Video
Creating a video is easier than its ever been in the past. And, while years ago, camcorders were the only way to capture video, today there are many other devices for doing so including newer digital SLR and point-and-shoot cameras as well as cell phones, notebook computers and netbook computers. On prior assignments, for example, I’ve recorded video using a Canon 7D camera, Canon Powershot point-and-shoot camera and also an iPhone. While varying widely in price and features, all have produced high quality results capable of holding the viewers attention.
A GREAT NEW CAMERA: During the past few months I’ve been working with an amazing and inexpensive camera that can record video (including HD quality), still images and time-lapse movies. I’ll be posting a detailed review of it later this month.
