Documenting your travels is important and we believe there is simply no way of documenting your travels that compares to video. They take you right back to the very moment in a super intense way. With technology that exists now, you can capture every angle of the beautiful places you are seeing as well as the audio. And at the end of the day, videos just make you feel things.
The problem? Well, taking good videos can be not only difficult, but a bit overwhelming if you don’t have experience or know quite what you’re doing. Sure, anyone can hit record on their iPhone, but that doesn’t mean that the footage you capture is going to be worth a darn thing. We feel your pain when it comes to having skills behind the video camera. That’s why this is such an exciting post for us to share with you all.
It comes from a dear friend of the Wild Bum community, Kaylee LaMoine. She runs her very own film and photography company, and is in the process of starting The Film Gals, where she will mentor entrepreneurs to better utilize video for their businesses. She also happens to be an awesome human and a wizard behind the camera. Whether she’s filming or snapping photos, Kaylee is the girl we want capturing our every move.
We are thrilled to share her top 5 tips for how to get better videos of your travels. This girl knows her stuff, and she truly wants to help us all be better videographers. So, if you’re ready to start capturing your travels in the best way, read on!
Tip #1: Shoot with a purpose, so you can tell a story.
The first mistake people make while attempting to capture their travels is to just let that camera roll. They walk around and let the camera document every second of every day. That’s not interesting and no one is going to want to go back and watch that or go through that footage to pick out the 1 – 2 minutes of fun or interesting footage. Shoot with a purpose so you can tell a story. Sometimes, it helps to come up with a plan beforehand, so you know what types of moments you want to capture.
Tip #2: Know your equipment.
Whether you are documenting your travels on your phone, Gopro, or a DSLR, knowing your equipment and it’s capabilities is a must. For example, a GoPro is an amazing camera with so many cool features. It’s waterproof, pretty indestructible, small and compact, but it has a very wide angle lens built into it, so you’re not going to be able to capture a lot of detail with it (especially from far away). I would suggest using your phone or another camera to get those more detailed shots so you can have some variety. Which brings me to my next point…
Tip #3: Get a variety of shots and angles.
When you get back from a long trip the last thing you want to do is go through the hours of footage and photos you captured. But if you have fun capturing your trip with different shots and angles it might be a bit more interesting to go back through it all. Be creative and get a variety of shots (wide, medium and close-ups) and a variety in the types of things you are shooting. Spice it up a little with some shots that you might not typically think of.
Here are some examples: capture some footage of your family waving to the camera in front of a fishing boat, sign or statue. Then while on the fishing excursion get a variety of different shots and footage of people actually doing that activity like, a close up on the fishing reel, someone catching a fish, facial expressions, the water splashing against the boat, etc.
Tip #4: Stay organized.
Organize your footage and photos in some way. Whether it’s by day, activity, alphabetical order, or any other system that works for you. This will make your life so much easier down the road when you want to go back and look at what you captured, and put it all together into a longer video.
Tip #5: Be diligent with backups and storage.
If you are documenting your travels you’ll quickly realize that photos and videos use a lot of data and take up a lot of storage on your phone or camera. Buy a portable hard drive that you can bring with you on your trips and backup your footage and photos on a daily basis or after each trip so that you know everything is safe and sound and ready for viewing.
There you have it! The top 5 tips from a videographer. Video can be an amazing and very effective way to capture your travels, but it can also be difficult or intimidating. Using these tips will make it much easier to get better travel videos of your experiences, every single time. Happy recording!
