Videography

I really like videography, we all like videography, but videography is really hard and time consuming.

In fact that’s not entirely true. The truth is that it has never been easier to produce videos and even find an audience for your videos and the very real truth is that it is only really difficult to do videography well.

What is my experience of videography?

I have been producing videos in the real world where I have to make money for most of the last 15 years. In the real world I am a Digital Marketer and for a long time I ran an actual marketing company. If people started saying nice things about my company, or I could coerce them into saying nice things about my business, I would point a camera at them and share their video testimonial on YouTube and my website. This is a great expression of the value of video. If people are considering using my business that can see my actual customers talking about the actual value that we have delivered for them and they will identify with them and the challenges they are facing and they might give us the opportunity to talk to them. This is a great example of how you can do videography really poorly and still get huge value from it – you can check it out here.

That went on for years and got to the point where my ex-wife told me that there were too many and it made us look desperate – there is a very good reason that she is my ex-wife 🙂

I also got into the habit of recording some of my talks and stuff, a little bit like Jordan Peterson recorded and uploaded his lectures, although they were nothing like as interesting or as popular.

However, I did enjoy some success with this one video that ranked on YouTube for the phrase LinkedIn for a number of years and generated 600,000 views and some money, which was nice.

I am still on a video mission with that business even though it no longer functions as a proper business I am putting out a slightly better produced series of videos on how to do marketing and I have a bit of a marketing podcast thing happening.

So you have made a lot of shitty marketing videos, have you made anything interesting or beautiful?

So I have been pretty committed to turning out video with low production values for work, I have also produced some video that I am quite proud of.

In 2015 I spent 5 months travelling around New Zealand and produced a lot of videos about that experience, you can check the New Zealand Travel Review here.

This is the video that I was most proud of.

And this was the most fun.

I also, as part of my travels decided that I was going to produce a vlog, that was in August of 2016 this was Episode 1.

Episode 3 was going to be epic, but it never got finished, it was taking three days to edit a daily video.

So have you actually made a beautiful video?

This is the most beautiful video I have made, it took 8 days, that’s 29.5 seconds of video per day.

I was actually really pleased with it. It was a collaboration with a mate, he was really pleased with it. All he had to do was credit me with a link, that’s what he agreed to do but when it came down to it that was too difficult or would cost him too much traffic. Needless to say we aren’t mates any longer.

So why are you talking about videography on this site?

So here is the thing – video and photography clearly go well together. If you have the kit to take nice photos you almost have the kit to make nice videos. It take longer and there is more that can go wrong but actually video could be, has been for many photographers, the key to the freedom to do what they want.

The best example Thomas Heaton. As I understand it he went from jobbing photographer to becoming a dedicated Landscape Photographer and that is largely due to his YouTube channel. Landscape Photography has to be far and away the least commercial of all photography genres, and he is doing it through video and YouTube.

So in the next year I am going to be taking the time to shoot more video, edit more video and publish more video, cause you know, you never know.

How can you support me in my videography journey?

If you have feedback or tips for me and my videography, or if you are nearby and fancy getting out for a shoot be sure to get in touch; or if you happen to be stumble across a video of mine on YouTube you could do the like, subscribe, share, comment thing.