Vi..vi..vi..video

When I travel, the experience is the part countryside, part people, and part the character of the road itself. Its always been a challenge to communicate the feeling of interesting road with a still camera.

Last summer, I got one of those video cameras that you can mount to your helmet or bike with the idea of communicating the my travels in moving pictures. My first public attempt is below.


As mentioned before, last fall's trip was splashed by a lot of rain. This 4+ minute video is a mash up of clips taken from one afternoon of riding in West Virginia on a day when the rain relented and the roads dried up enough to make it worth getting the video camera out.

Taking videos is a very different animal than still photography. I've mastered neither, but have a ton more to learn about video. The shoulder mount in this video is OK, but my helmet is in the way. I would love to mount the camera on the bike so the viewer could experience the bike's lean angle but vibration is a challenge, especially on a thumper like the KLR.


I wasted a lot of time try to fix some blurry spots in the shadows that turned out to be the relatively slow processor of my computer. Shown in HD on a flat screen TV and shown in 1080p, the videos look their best and the blurry shadows are gone.

I've been trying the various video websites. This Vimeo link allows you to see it in 720p in "HD" or smaller. The HD file pretty big, so you may want to click HD off if you don't have a fast connection.



Please pass along any comments or criticism. I'm still learning in every way. In the meantime, I hope the video gives a sense of my backroads travels. The roads in this video are around Pancake, Williamsport, and Greenland, WV.