It’s the end of 2012, which has been an amazing year, and I want to share with you a few things that have made my year so fun. I’m a photographer, first and foremost, but I’ve spent this year honing my video skills. Some for fun, some for clients, but all of it has been a wonderful adventure for yours truly. Here are a few examples of what I’m up to when I’m not shooting stills…
Alex and Lou Do Landing, NJ
In January, Alex, Dave and I went to our friend Peter’s house to work on his train layout. I had just gotten my HERO GoPro, so playing with it was a top priority. Hilarity ensued…
The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.
This was also the setting for the first of many, many time lapses I’ve created this year. Here we are cleaning Peter’s layout and returning it to working order:
The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.
Rally Bethlehem Township!
My brother and I had some fun with the GoPro, too. We took a few laps around our mom’s neighborhood, with a variety of camera placements. Sort of seems like you’re watching some very exciting auto racing coverage, assuming excitement can occur at 35mph in suburbia.
The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.
Macungie
When I’m back east, I spend a lot of time watching trains in my old haunts around the Lehigh Valley. NS’s Reading Line, which runs west from Allentown to (you guessed it!) Reading, is one of my favorite rail lines to frequent, and at night I like to sit in my car somewhere along the tracks, set up my camera, and let the trains go by. Well, this being 2012, I decided I’d also try my hand at shooting some train video. I was also able to combine another love of mine, audio recording, to try to tell the entire story of what it’s like to sit trackside at night:
The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.
Swimming and Seeburg
Along with my field recordings adding some personality to my tiny contributions to web-based moviemaking, another reason I dabble as much as I do with video is that it’s the perfect vehicle to trot out my weird obsession with obscure music. A favorite catalog of mine, the Seeburg Background Music System, is a great source of inspiration for me when I’m cobbling together the footage I’ve shot. Here’s a bit of swimming pool fun I had with the GoPro, my brother, and our cousins. Waterproof cameras really are fun.
The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.
Hello, Martha!
The very talented Laura submitted her fine works to a contest put on by Martha Stewart Living. Not only was she the sole Hoosier selected as a finalist, but her charming little animals ended up on the magazine’s website this winter! All of that is to say, part of Laura’s submission was this video I made of her making some stuffed animals.
The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.
French Lick Scenic Railway
I often find myself in French Lick, what with all that event shooting I do, so I have a fair amount of video from the time I spend there. Here’s a video I made of this year’s Polar Express event- keep an ear out for that aforementioned obscure music!
The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.
Before the Polar Express began, though, those tents had to go up! Here’s a time lapse of a long day of temporary structure construction, nicely packaged into a sub-two minute piece of video:
The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.
The Fall Trip
Every October, my group of friends get together to take photographs of trains and hang out with each other outside in the foliage. We pick a different place every year to meet up, and in 2012, it was back to the spiritual home of our little club- Cresson, PA, on the west slope of the Alleghenies. Here’s a short video of some trains passing.
The video cannot be shown at the moment. Please try again later.