Moving slide shows and seasons best wishes

[John McCully]

Kodachrome
They give us those nice bright colors
They give us the greens of summers
Makes you think all the world's a sunny day…

I’m the same age as Paul Simon, more or less, and when I was growing up my parents and their friends held ‘slide show’ evenings. I always enjoyed those events, growing up on the farm way out in the country with just my parents, my brothers, the dogs, cats, hens, and seagulls, and sheep; thousands upon thousands of stupid sheep, and so when we had visitors it was for me a welcome change. I did enjoy what much later became an onerous boring thing to do; sit through an evening of viewing someone else's badly shot Kodachrome slides - here’s one of Aunt Sally from the side, here’s one of Aunt Sally from further around - you may remember that era if you, like me, were born about the same time as Paul Simon.

My father was an avid photographer and Kodachrome was his favourite slide film. When, at a ripe old age, he went on his merry way to heaven I inherited his Leidolf Lordomat range finder 35mm film camera, which I still have of course. Top notch German engineering, he frequently told me.

That was quite a long time ago and much water has passed under the bridge since then. I continue to enjoy shooting photographs even while moving pictures, video, has been my primary focus for the last twenty or so years.

Now I call myself a hybrid shooter and my primary piece of kit is a Lumix G9. I shoot wildlife, landscapes, seascapes, yachts, mountains, valleys; you name it. I am fortunate to live these days in the South Island, New Zealand where gorgeous subject matter abounds; so much packed into a small country.

I frequently visit here at DVInfo and admire the work of folks including Doug Jensen, Mark Williams, Mark Rosensweig, Paul Cronin and many others; the list is long. By and large the format is short clips, mostly two, three or four seconds duration and not infrequently with a pleasant music soundtrack added and I have created my fair share of such small pieces.

But here’s the thing, here is what I’m doing a lot of these days: I shoot video 4k 60p of (almost) still life subject matter. For example, just a couple of hours ago I shot a ‘portrait’ of a sleeping Mallard duck, close up and personal with a 600mm equiv. lens and the movement of the duck’s body as it breathes and the strange eyelid opening and closing is all that is happening. I rendered off a 30 second clips. Viewed on my 27 inch 4k monitor it looks quite lovely, in my humble opinion. That’s my most recent example.

So I’m shooting video of what might well be a photograph where there is slight subtle movement, live soundtrack, and treating it as if one might be there sitting looking at the scene in all its beauty, the slight movement of a blade of grass, a bird way out on the horizon, a graceful sailboat almost motionless on a mooring, and so on. You see, I’m still doing Kodachromes (much less saturated of course) but now 4k 60p. And when I get a half-decent Internet connection I shall post some of these ‘slides’ for you to view, or not.

So, after all these years as Christmas and New Years Day, lifetimes, come and go not a lot changes, we are more or less the same even as that which is happening in the world all around us has become a little more worrisome.

All the best for the festive season

John

[Paul Cronin]

John,
What a great post. You take me back and make me smile. To hear the Kodak 16mm projector clacking away on family movie night. And the click of the shutter on my Minolta SR-1 camera at the beach, salt marsh, and off sailing with family. Those great days as a kid that shaped our passions, and taught us to see life around us through the lens.

Thank you for the memories. I look forward to your Kodachrome life through the lens, from one of the most beautiful places on this planet.

Merry Christmas and a Wonderful New Years full of Peace and Joy

[Doug Jensen]

Yeah, great post and I share the same feelings.

The timing of this post is really interesting to me because right this very minute I'm rendering a 16 minute wildlife video that I edited yesterday, and the average length of the shots is 10-20 seconds rather the quicker cuts I'd normally do. Normally I'd cut this material down to 4 minutes or less. My wife always hates it when I cut too fast and says she wants to see more of the animal behavior. I confess to liking the longer shots too, but I just figured nobody wants to watch 15 seconds of a single bird flying in slow motion. But I do like it. I like to see what the animals are up to. So, I'll post that video soon and maybe some people will enjoy seeing what I get to see -- but what often gets left in the cutting room floor. It's still not going to be exactly what John is talking about, but it is a major change for me in that direction of holding on shots longer. In fact, after reading John's post I kinda want to go back and make my new video 20-25 minutes using the same footage.

[Paul Cronin]

Look forward to seeing the longer version Doug, I agree with your wife.

[Doug Jensen]

She'll be glad to hear that!

[Doug Jensen]

I've posted my video in another thread. And as I say in my post over there, if I had time to re-edit I'd make the shots ever longer: http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/under-wa...ml#post1948347