Too Handsome for My Ego
October 14, 2020
I'm learning that the key to great travel stories and vlogs is good (hopefully great) photography and videography.
I'm not entirely unhandy with a camera. But I am entirely untrained, completely self taught. I follow the PSL method: Point, Shoot and Laugh at all my mistakes.
Flip Flash 110 film camera. Mine wasn't a Kodak, my people were poor! Not my image. I think this image belongs to Terror_Bear on Reddit. I think. Sorry.
My first film camera came to me as a gift in or around 1986. It was a 110 film kit, in a plastic bubble pack from a drug store, with a disposable Flip Flash! No batteries required, the magic was in the big plastic flash thingy that will remain in a landfill for a few ice ages. (Someone in my family loved me and did the best they could. I'm still grateful.) Did it take terrible pictures? Maybe. I had a bad habit of opening the camera and pulling out the film. (This was long before I learned to RTFM!) I couldn't believe that the manufacturer would make a product I could foul up by doing something so innocuous. What did I know? I was a seventh grade Catholic school kid! I would then spend my tiny allowance to send my film off to Clark film processing and several decades later I would get a package IN THE MAIL!! filled with brown squares. Eventually, I got the message, I left the film in the camera and I learned my first lesson on being disappointed with consumer products.
My first experience with a video camera was in high school. I was the AV guy - no shock, right? I know. The camera sat on your shoulder, had a separate satchel and used VHS tapes, but for whatever reason the tapes wouldn't play on a normal VHS player. I never said I was a GOOD AV geek. I used the camera to tape the spring musical. Repeatedly. For years I knew every lyric of every song in Godspell. I barely graduated, but I had those lyrics going for me!
Since then, like most of you, I have graduated from film to digital to The Cloud. Digital media has always blown me away. My first SD card was 128 MB, yet it stored hundreds of (very compressed) songs. My first new Macintosh in 1997 was their AV model designed for video production professionals, it had a 6 gigabyte hard drive. I paid $7700.00 for that Mac, took me over five years to pay it off. I just upgraded the microSD card on my phone from a 64 GB to a 256 GB card that cost me all of $48. My Galaxy 8 can do things television studios couldn't do in 1986.
Yet, I'm still pretty much that kid, pulling the film cartridge out of his plastic drug store camera. I have some incredible tools at my finger tips, yet I have no idea how to best use them.
I plan to change this state of affairs. I want to learn the real poop on photography. I will no longer be intimidated. I have proven time and again that this old dog can still learn some new tricks.
Where does a Gen X dude go to learn something new? Why, YouTube, of course.
Peter Freekin' McKinnon
Almost immediately upon setting out on my adventure in learning, I stumbled over Peter McKinnon. Wow. In the last two weeks I have learned more about photography, videography, cinematography, camera gear, Ford F150 trucks and coffee than I learned in the previous four decades, two of which I spent in the town that reinvented coffee: Seattle!
In that time I have grown to admire the man in a rather unhealthy fashion. I don't want to merely emulate him, I'm pretty sure I want to go the route of those women who get millions of dollars of plastic surgery to look like a Barbie doll. I want his life! I want to be young and handsome and goofy in a sexy way, riding a jet ski, filming a vlog with one hand, controlling a drone with another hand and making coffee in a Chemex with my other two hands … (1 + 2, divide by pi, carry the four... never mind!)
The point is, he has a hell of a life. Jetting off to Amsterdam to teach Casey Neistat how to vlog (as if!). Eating lunch on tiny Canadian islands by chopper. And, of course, The Bucket Shot.
If you haven't checked his channel out, you should. Even if you don't want to learn anything about photography, there is plenty of fascinating content and pretty 120 fps goodness for anyone. You're welcome!