The blog of photographer Kim Ayres

Videoing the Environmental Art Festival Scotland

The photographs taken by me and fellow photographer, Colin Hattersley, for the Environmental Art Festival Scotland are now all up online and can be found on their website and their facebook page here:

EAFS Website (link disabled as it's no longer active)
EAFS Facebook

More than the photography, though, I was asked if I could do some video shots too, to help give a sense of what it was actually like for the visitors to various events.

The camera I use - a Canon 7D - has a pretty good video capability, and with good lenses on the picture quality can be rather tasty in the right light.

The difficulty when doing photography at the same time, though, is switching the head between entirely different modes. Yes I am using the same piece of equipment, but there's a huge difference between creating a static image and a moving one.

And then the editing requires an entirely different skill set too.

However, I threw myself into it wholeheartedly and below is the final result.

The soundtrack comprises of voiceover artist, Innes Smith, who did the station idents for a radio broadcast - "The Dark Outside FM" - during the festival, and a remixing of a Scruffy Buzzards tune, "Four Hundred"

Hope you enjoy it.

EAFS Video from EAF Scotland on Vimeo.

9 comments

Capt. Schmoe said...

Kim,

I enjoyed the video very much and I thought the music and voice interjection a perfect match to it. The festival looked like a great event as well.

How did you stabilize the camera while shooting the video? I own a 7D as well, but I have only shot 60 seconds of video with it during the three years that I have owned it and the results were less than stellar. The image quality was fine, but I bounced it all over the place and it was tough to watch.

I was impressed with the look that your video had, not totally immobile, yet the limited movement adding to the mood of the imagery.

Thanks for sharing.

Kim Ayres said...

CApt. Schmoe - Thanks for the positive feedback and kind words :)

As for keeping the camera relatively steady, i used a couple of different tricks. The first is in quite a few shots, I simply don't move it. I stay still and the action moves through the shot. This is probably the most effective way of shooting video.

The shots where I am walking along, I have the camera held out in front of me at chest height, with my arms bent so they act a bit like shock-absorbers - I saw it as a tip on how to film with a DSLR video on YouTube.

And the ones where I'm driving, the camera was just resting on the dashboard.

Titus said...

That was lovely Kim! Didn't even notice you doing it. That camera's not inside a bag, is it...?

hope said...

Just left Titus' page with your wonderful photos to this. I commented to her there that your photos seemed to have a life of their own, so I could pick them out easily.

And here I come to find them ACTUALLY having a life of their own. Too cool...and I love the music! (Hopefully I didn't howl too long).

Kim Ayres said...

Titus - I had the camera round my neck, but because I was videoing rather than taking photos, for the most part I was filming from chest-height, using the screen on the back, rather than putting it up to my eye, so it wouldn't have been so obvious. It was Colin Hattersley who was doing all the obvious photography at that event :)

Hope - I hope you enjoyed howling - you should record it and put it on your blog :)

Anonymous said...

Thoroughly enjoyable video! Beautiful country.

Kim Ayres said...

Thanks Allen. And yes, it's a beautiful part of the world round here :)

Eryl said...

The video is fab, all the elements compliment each other and work together. Now you're a film maker as well as a photographer, musician and writer.

Kim Ayres said...

Thanks Eryl - although film maker is stretching it somewhat. I think if ever I reach a point with the photography where it's not doing it for me so much, I can easily imagine moving into film. But at the moment I've done nothing more than scratch the surface

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