On Saturday I posted a video to Facebook.  It was a quick synopsis of my recent trip to Panama. The response was amazing with lots of comments about how great it was. I thought it would be fun to post, here, how I did it. Unfortunately the video file is too big for this site but feel free to check it out on my Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Kachina-Photos-336869868248/

I went to panama with only two cameras, my Lumix GX-8 mirrorless with a 28-150 lens and my Canon S120 point and shoot with waterproof housing.  I brought my tripod but never used it. I know, shame on me.  Am I a real photographer?  Well, yes.  As they say…there are a hundred ways to skin a cat.

I am a self proclaimed minimalist and live by the “Less is More” philosophy. Most folks, while traveling, have enough to deal with without being bogged down with camera gear. It is one of my goals, in this blog,  to show  how to travel with minimal gear and still get compelling, interesting and fun images, both moving and still.

I didn’t have a full storyboard planned out in my head before I started. And, to be sure, this is “vacation photography”. I wasn’t sent there on assignment and  didn’t have the luxury of  spending two weeks capturing a single, perfect shot.   At times I happened to be out during the  wonderful lighting of sunrise or sunset but, for the most part, it was mid-day, ordinary, vacation travel. I did know, however, that I needed make a conscious effort to hit the record button knowing I wanted to make this video in the end.  As I wandered and saw action happening around me I purposely captured it in video, not stopping the action  in a still frame. I took mostly 5 second snippets of  events knowing that the iMovie Trailer program only uses up to two seconds of video at a time.

So, how did I do it? You’ll be amazed at how easy it is. At this point, if you don’t have a Mac with iMovie then I’m not sure how useful the rest of this will be to you, but here it goes. I’ll just number the steps to make it easier to follow.

1. Gather all of the little videos out of Lightroom and move them into a folder on my desktop.

2. Open iMovie and select Create New.  Here you have two choices, a movie or a trailer. I chose trailer knowing that a lot of the work is already done for me. Also, Facebook readily posts trailers because it doesn’t use copyrighted songs where as in a movie you would choose a full length song with words…and a copyright.

3. Choose a theme. I went with Travel.

4. Select Add Media. Here you will highlight and open your movie files on your desktop. This will add them to your trailer.

5. It gives you three ways to organize your story, Outline, Storyboard and Shot List. Under Storyboard you can change the words on the title slides that appear to better fit your needs. You can’t change the music or length of any of the videos.

And seriously, that’s it. You drag and drop your videos into the slots you want, change the words and when you’re done iMovie has a direct link to Facebook. Most cameras these days have the ability to video. I encourage you to play with it. It’s pretty fun and adds a flair to your vacation photos that goes beyond the still image.

Happy Shooting!!