Stoking the video habit

Entomologists from the San Diego Natural History Museum perform a rough sort of insect species collected in Torrey Pines State Natural Reserve during the 2010 BioBlitz, May 22, 2010. Photo by Will Parson.

Shooting video is something I’m trying to make a routine part of going out on assignment, even if I’m just supposed to be taking photos or writing a short article.

To make this feasible it’s easy to think of the video clips as “long photographs.” They’re very basic, standalone shots, but for someone like me who is new to video they have started getting me thinking like a videographer, and for now that’s good enough. Video doesn’t always have to complicated or well-polished.

For a story recently I was supposed to just take photos and write 500 words about the event. It was easy enough to set my camera on a wall and take a ‘long photograph’ of a bunch of entomologists from the San Diego Natural History Museum sorting specimens during their 2010 BioBlitz, where they count as many species in an area as they can during a 24-hour period. Read more about the BioBlitz at the Del Mar Times.

BioBlitz 2010 from Will Parson on Vimeo.

Shooting video is something I'm trying to make a routine part of going out on assignment, even if I'm just supposed to be taking photos or writing a short article.