Betimes I wish I had an actual camera instead of an iPhone, especially when zooming in on something like the last full supermoon of the year.
But then I remember that I’m no great shakes as a shooter and the phone that I already own is exactly my speed. I’m not exactly Ansel Adams. More like Gomez Addams, or maybe Uncle Fester.
Hell, people who know what they’re doing shoot movies — actual films, not TikTok dances or cute-animal videos — using iPhones.
Not me, of course. Because (a) I don’t know what I’m doing, and (2) I don’t really want to learn.
When I was shooting bike reviews for Adventure Cyclist and teasers for Charles Pelkey’s Live Update Guy it was occasionally fun, kinda, sorta. But also complicated, because I was using a GoPro, or a more traditional camcorder — Sony VIXIA mini X or Panasonic HC-V770 — and there’s a whole lot of wobble when you’re recording video and audio in the wild, especially when the production crew is dumber than a bag of hammers and your leading man has a radio face.
Anyway, them newfangled consarned moving pictures do all the work for the audience. When you read or listen to a story, your imagination has to break a sweat. With video it just sorta slouches on the couch with one hand in the popcorn bowl and the other thumbing a phone, checking to see if there’s something better on.
Mad Blog Media 
Oh yea! The photo caption is cheesy fer sure you hoser.
But, the rest is a beauty, heh?
I bet you still have all that stuff too, and it’s squirreled away in its appropriate hidey hole. Or, Herself done sold it on the ebay. Better go check!
Cheesy for reals, hey? Yep, I still have all that stuff because you never know. The Canon VIXIA mini X is a particularly nifty little piece of gear aimed at the early vloggers.
I don’t see myself getting back into video but I didn’t expect to relaunch Radio Free Dogpatch, either.
One camera to cover all the bases?
https://www.crutchfield.com/p_05413602/Nikon-Z-30-Creators-Kit.html?tp=35732
That’s a pretty stylish setup. I already have the Rode mini-shotgun mic, which I’ve used with audio recorders and the Panasonic camcorder. The Canon has an excellent built-in mic, and the thing is so foolproof that I wound up using it for anything that involved me being a stationary talking head.
I spent way too much money on a Canon DSLR and still found it hard to get high quality pics of the moon with the Zoom lens, even with a lanyard and tripod. I think I needed to spend even more money on a better lens…which I was not willing to do.
Ayuh. When I could still turn an occasional dollar for a photo I was happy to keep a couple actual cameras on hand, a point-and-shoot for travel and a DSLR for anything serious.
But once that ship finally sailed, caught fire, exploded, and sank, I got rid of ’em. I wasn’t a photographer then and I never will be. I lack the talent and training. I’ve worked with actual pro photographers and have no illusions as to my chops as a shooter.
There are some pretty artistic people in my mother’s side of the gene pool, but I am not one of them, in spite of my attempts to occasionally do art. I think the typical grade I got in high school art class was about a C. I still recall my art teacher’s comment on my report card one quarter: “disappointing”.
Main thing I used cameras for was field work in grad school. We had to do our own photography. Kodachrome and Ektachrome went to the developers (although a friend in Rochester taught me to do my own Ektachrome). We did B/W printing and slides ourselves in the department darkroom. That was as close as I ever got to meaningful photography. Lots of pictures of rocks….
I don’t call what I do “art.” I remember arguing with an artist bro in college about whether cartooning was art, and I still think it can be (“Calvin and Hobbes” is one stellar example). But my scribbles never approached such lofty heights. Everything I do, whether it’s writing, photography, cartooning, podcasting, or a short video, is basically journalism, which I think of as a craft.
That being said, I think everyone should have a go at creating something, whether you call it “art” or “craft.” Don’t sweat the labels. Just make stuff.
Easy to get hung up on labels, categories, and genres. Most of the folks not making stuff are the ones doing the labeling. Cartooning is art to me; can’t see it any other way, at least in the English language. Gibson Acoustic Guitars, in Bozeman MT, calls their plant a craftory. Usually making up words makes me suspicious. Craftory just fits for the work going on inside the building. They have a youtube channel, Gibson TV, that has a series of videos called The Process. It shows the building of guitars, both electric and acoustic, from wood to finished instrument.
I still miss shooting Ektachrome Infared. Add an orange filter, wildly bracket the exposures, and voila! Instant psychedelic (or psychodelic) fun & games. One of the emulsion layers (green, I think) was replaced with one sensitive to infared. For all I know, they may still make it. I once shot a wedding with it. It was sorta appropriate for the times and the people.
I always appreciated the work of a good shooter. It was one of the benefits of working a copy desk, or covering races and trade shows for the bike mags. You got to see a little more of the process than is apparent to most folks.
Guys like my buddy Casey B. Gibson were roaring around on the back of moto bikes, hauling 50 pounds of gear everywhere and turning in top-shelf images, while scribes like me were traveling light with pad, pen, laptop, and maybe an audio recorder for backup. The words didn’t always come easy, but we had fewer lower-back issues.