I discovered the usefulness of this feature when I edited video clips of our epic annual family road trip to Colorado. In between time-lapse videos of the drive, I added highlights of the main stops we made at state and national parks. Most of that video footage came from my smartphone, an LG G5.

As you might expect, the hand-held videos were shaky — even with the phone’s internal stabilization feature. When I got home and started editing the clips, I noticed the stabilization option in Google Photos. I tried it out and was pleasantly surprised by the results.

Related: How to solve impossible problems: Daniel Russell’s awesome Google search techniques

For each video you want to stabilize, you open the Google Photos app on your phone, tap on a video clip, and then tap on the “edit” option that looks like a pencil. You’ll see the “stabilize” feature at the bottom of the screen. Tap that, and you’ll have to wait a few moments, depending on the size of the video, for the app to stabilize your video.

It magically transformed my shaky footage into videos that looked like they were shot with a tripod. The end result was a slightly cropped video that might have a bit of warping in the image, depending on how it was shot. But I didn’t notice much distortion in the footage I shot.

For anyone who spends a lot of time shooting video with their smartphones, such as journalists, this could be a handy tool that irons out annoying shakes and leaves mostly smooth, professional looking footage. Stabilize each clip, add it to your video-editing software, and you’re all set for your next news story or family adventure.

The post A handy tool for journalists: Stabilize your shaky smartphone videos with Google’s photo app appeared first on John Tedesco.

I know the name is a mouthful. Translated into the way normal people speak, it means this is a versatile lens capable of shooting wide-angle shots; decently zoomed-in shots; shots in dim light with a respectable f/stop of 2.8 at the widest angle; shots with image stabilization; and extreme close-ups.

Those were all the things I was looking for when I first reviewed this budget-friendly lens in 2013, and all these years later it’s still frequently on my Canon DSLR.

There are two versions of the Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4 DC Macro OS HSM. The first was announced in 2006, which is the one I bought and enjoy today. Sigma discontinued it but you can still find it on Amazon. Sigma also released a newer, more compact “contemporary” version. Both lenses only work on crop-sensor cameras, not full frames.

The Sigma is a handy walk-around lens that shoots great photos — we’ll get to that later. But the main reason I bought it was for its versatility shooting DSLR videos.

When you’re filming a news event or your unpredictable kids, you might not have time to switch lenses to get the shot you want. It’s really handy to have a lens on your camera that can handle just about any situation.

This is hardly the only versatile lens on the market. A great option is made by Canon, the EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM. Awesome, awesome lens. But a little pricey. I was seriously considering buying it when I stumbled across the the more affordable Sigma.

The Sigma offers a slightly longer zoom range than the Canon, plus it offers the ability to take extreme close ups.

Being able to get really close to the subject of a photo or video is sweet. For a recent story about the safety record of the hot-air balloon industry, this was the lens I used when I visited a balloon festival in Helotes and shot clips for a mini-documentary style video. At one point (toward the end of the video) I was in the cramped basket of a balloon, in really close quarters. The macro feature of the Sigma helped me keep everything in focus.

The same features that make the Sigma so great for video also make it a great walk-around lens for photography. Here are some samples (click on the image to look at a larger version on Flickr):

The main downside of the Sigma is that the aperture gets smaller as you zoom in, meaning it collects less light. That’s not a problem with Canon’s EF-S 17-55mm.

Related: How to shoot better video of anything

And the focus ring on the Sigma isn’t as silky smooth as a good Canon lens. The auto focus is a little noisier and you can’t manually focus while in the auto-focus setting. These are problems the Canon lens doesn’t have.

But if you can live with those downsides, the Sigma might serve you well and help you tell your own stories, just like it has for me.

Sometimes I blog about stuff that helps journalists. I pay for all the products I review on my blog. To help defray those costs, I use Google ads and Amazon’s affiliate advertising program, which provides a way for sites to earn commissions by linking to Amazon.com. There’s no extra cost to you, and I’ll never link to stuff I don’t like or try to make you buy something that sucks. These reviews are my honest opinions. Thanks for reading.

The post Review: Why my trusty Sigma 17-70mm lens is always on my camera appeared first on John Tedesco.

So I’ve read more than my fair share of reviews about stabilizers, Glidecams and Steadicams. They rely on gimbals and counterweights to produce smooth, dream-like shots. But they’re often expensive, and some customers complain it takes forever to balance these contraptions.

About 15 years ago, Rene Kropf and his colleagues were experiencing the same frustration as they worked in his garage trying to design a tool that could help stabilize shaky film footage for light cameras.

“We went down the same route of counterweights and all that,” Kropf told me. “And we saw that as a nightmare. It’s like, the sun went down and we still haven’t balanced it, so forget that.”

Kropf, the owner of Cobra Crane, a camera gear company in California, abandoned the gimbal system altogether. Instead, he helped devised something called the SteadyTracker Ultralite, a crowbar-like device with two adjustable weighted ends and a balancing pad in the middle that rests on top of your hand.

I recently bought the SteadyTracker UltraLite on Amazon. The SteadyTracker is touted as a simpler, inexpensive option compared to other stabilizers. I’ve been using it for a few weeks and produced some sample shots in this video review. When I called Cobra Crane with a few questions about the SteadyTracker, I was surprised to get a call back from Kropf, the company’s owner. He offered insights and tips that aren’t in the instruction manual.

Related: Why my trusty Sigma 17-70mm lens is always on my camera

“It’s relatively inexpensive,” Kropf said. “It’s pretty easy to use. And the biggest thing, the number one thing that people comment on, is it’s a super-quick set up, so you don’t miss shots.”

With the SteadyTracker, you attach your camera to a base plate on top. The plate can be adjusted back and forth and side to side. This YouTube video walks you through the process. It takes about five to ten minutes. If you plan to always use the same camera, you never have to tinker with it again. You’re all set.

The SteadyTracker’s simplicity is both a benefit and a drawback. Without gimbals or counterweights to worry about, it’s quick to set up. But so far I haven’t been able to consistently achieve silky smooth shots. My videos were certainly smoother than what I’d be able to achieve going handheld. But side-to-side wobbling occasionally cropped up in my video clips.

So as a stabilizer, the SteadyTracker is OK. But as a versatile piece of equipment, it really shines.

I took it to the birthday party of a friend’s daughter and was pleasantly surprised when I discovered I could use the SteadyTracker for a variety of shots. Its base is stable, so you can use it as a mini-tripod. Or you can hold it against your hip to steady your camera, like a monopod. Or use it for relatively smooth panning shots. Or hoist it on your shoulders to get overhead shots.

This means you can bring your camera and your SteadyTracker to something like a party, a wedding or a news event and you pretty much have all your shots covered. The real benefit of the SteadyTracker is that it’s more than a stabilizer.

Another cool thing about the SteadyTracker is that you can buy a “low-mode” attachment that hangs from the bottom to give you low-angle shots. Not many stabilizers offer this feature. Your camera skims across the ground. It’s great for getting down to the level of kids or pets. This is one of the main selling points of the SteadyTracker in my book.

One question I had was whether to use my camera’s image stabilization system. I had assumed that turning it on would help create smoother shots. But some manufacturers of other Steadicam-like products recommend deactivating it. Kropf said that in most cases, leaving it on will improve the SteadyTracker’s performance.

“In general, when you’re walking with it, I would put the stabilizer on,” Kropf said. Try to use a wide-angle lens to get a panoramic effect and smoother shots.

Instructions for the SteadyTracker UltraLite say it can handle cameras weighing up to three pounds. Cobra Crane also sells a SteadyTracker Xtreme that can handle cameras weighing up to eight pounds. But the UltraLite is a solid piece of gear — like I said, it feels like a crowbar. I asked Kropf if the three-pound limit was a hard-and-fast rule. He said it’s more of a rough guideline. If you’re over the limit by a bit but can still balance the SteadyTracker, you’ll be OK.

That said, the lighter the camera, the better. I used this with a Canon T3i, a wide-angle Sigma lens and an H1 Zoom external microphone set up that weighed 3.5 pounds. It didn’t take long for my arm to feel the strain. Using it with the lighter Panasonic FZ-150 was much easier and more enjoyable.

“The number’s there as a guide,” Kropf said of the three-pound limit. “It’s not a super-hard number. But at the same time, if you’re at six pounds, maybe you’re not going to be as balanced as you could be.”

What about the grip? Should you hold it loosely, tightly, or what?

“It varies,” Kropf said. “Most of the time, you wrap your hand around the fuselage. You wrap your fingers around it, but you don’t hold a tight grip. It’s sort of floating on the top of your hand. It’s a gentle touch, because this is all about that. It’s about gentle moves and smooth starts and stops. Gradual stuff.” The exception is when you’re tilting the SteadyTracker for shots such as Dutch angles.

The trick is reducing vibration produced by your hand, arm and body as you walk. Take small steps. The instructions suggest walking like Groucho Marx.

The SteadyTracker does not come with a quick-release plate, which is a bummer. You have to screw the camera directly into the base plate. For about $45 I bought a Manfrotto monopod head with its own quick-release plate and screwed it to the SteadyTracker’s base plate so I could quickly attach and remove my camera. The nice thing about this particular model is I can adjust its angle and tilt the camera up and down. It would have been nice if the SteadyTracker came with this option.

Overall, I liked the SteadyTracker’s versatility and I see its potential to help people like multimedia journalists who show up at a scene without knowing what to expect. Maybe a situation will call for following somebody through a crowd. Or filming the subject of a video from an overhead angle. Or a low-angle view. The SteadyTracker can handle all those situations. “It’s versatile,” Kropf said.

So the SteadyTracker is a useful tool for on-the-go videographers who film events — and chase their rambunctious kids around with a camera when they get home.

Update: This post was revised to reflect the fact that there are two versions of the SteadyTracker. The larger version was invented before Kropf helped develop the SteadyTracker Ultralite.

Sometimes I blog about stuff that helps journalists. I pay for all the products I review on my blog. To help defray those costs, I use Google ads and Amazon’s affiliate advertising program, which provides a way for sites to earn commissions by linking to Amazon.com. There’s no extra cost to you, and I’ll never link to stuff I don’t like or try to make you buy something that sucks. These reviews are my honest opinions. Thanks for reading.

The post Review of the SteadyTracker UltraLite and tips from company owner Rene Kropf appeared first on John Tedesco.

I got to spend Sunday afternoon with members of the San Antonio Living History Association, who reenacted the historic battle of the Alamo and showed onlookers what life was like 177 years ago.

Related: A review of the Sigma 17-70mm lens for videographers

This was pure heaven for history buffs.

The post Reliving the Battle of the Alamo appeared first on John Tedesco.

Freelance photojournalist Tamir Kalifa spent two days working on this stunning time-lapse video of the Texas Legislature’s opening day for the 83rd legislative session. Lawmakers convene in Austin every two years and the event is widely covered by the media. But Kalifa, an intern at the Texas Tribune, captured the energy of the day in a unique, compelling way. I called him to ask how he did it.

Q: This is actually the second time the Texas Tribune has done a time lapse of the opening day of the Texas Legislature.

A: Yeah, that’s correct.

What were you trying to convey in this particular video and how does time lapse help you do that?

Well, I think that during the off year, the Texas government is sort of hibernating and waiting for this huge burst of energy that happens in the first few months of the year. So really what I wanted to show was the Legislature sort of waking up and coming to life and the excitement that everybody — from the legislators to the lobbyists to the lawyers to everyone’s families — I wanted to get across how people are hugely involved. I just thought doing a time lapse was the most efficient way to show the enormous scale of it. There were thousands and thousands of people swarming around the Capitol. There was an enormous line waiting to get into the House chamber to hear Joe Straus, to see him sworn in again.

It was amazing. I’m a musician in Austin. Free Week is just coming to a close now. You had all these free shows and everybody is clamoring to get in. It’s one in, one out when it gets to capacity. I realized, as I was desperately trying to get into the House to just get a little glimpse of it, there are a lot of Texans who get that kind of enjoyment and excitement out of the government. And that’s awesome. I really wanted to show that and kind of show the grandeur of it. There aren’t that many things in Texas that are as old as the capital. So it’s also cool to showcase it in that way.

That energy and excitement really comes across in the time lapse. You can really see this frenetic activity.

Frenetic is the word I actually used. It’s so intense when you have so many people. You can zoom all the way out and show it on this huge scale. It’s a way of trying to communicate the complexity of things. It’s the antithesis, in some ways, of what the photojournalist does. I wasn’t capturing moments. It was really kind of a stream of consciousness.

Related: A review of the Sigma 17-70mm lens for videographers

It seems like when you condense everything down like that at a fast pace, you kind of draw out the good parts, like the energy and excitement, and you get rid of the bad parts, like the tedium. I don’t know if opening day was very tedious, but there are a lot of meetings and hearings and lots of waiting at the Capitol.

It’s funny, I actually photographed security and people going up and down the stairs and the hallways. Some of (the shots) weren’t the right length, technically speaking. I didn’t do as quite a good of a job. Otherwise I probably would have included it because I thought those were cool details. But yeah, that’s another huge aspect of it. Another completely different way of looking at something that might seem monotonous and mundane. I would have liked to do things like that. Even people sitting in a room in fast motion, watching people’s body language in hyper speed is fascinating.

I’ve been a big fan of time lapse and how it completely changes your vantage point. A mundane situation suddenly changes into something interesting.

Especially since we’re so familiar with the things around us. As soon as you introduce this variable, all of the sudden it becomes this fresh, wild new experience.

Seems like that could be a real advantage for a story like this. Everybody’s covering the same event, writing news stories about it and taking pictures of it. But something like a time-lapse video gives you an opportunity to tell this story in a different way.

Yeah. If a picture is worth a thousand words, how much are 6,000 pictures put together at 24 frames a second worth? It says a lot. You can describe the amount of people who were there and the energy, but I don’t think anything is able to show that quite like a time lapse.

You mention the 6,000 photos. That was in the description of the video. It says you took 6,000 photos, used two different cameras and a variety of lenses — including a Ukrainian tilt-shift lens. Can you elaborate on the specific cameras and lenses you used?

Yeah, of course. I”m a photojournalist and my main cameras are a Canon 5D Mark II, and the original 5D, which I guess is now being referred to as the 5D classic. Really, only in the past couple months have I started experimenting with time lapse. I’ve got a variety of lenses that I use for shooting assignments. Mostly primes and a 16-35 zoom. And that’s what’s always able to get the job done.

I had ordered an intervalometer for an assignment I did for the Tribune in September, just documenting the Tribune festival that they put on every year. But I accidentally had it shipped to my parents’ house so I had to go out and buy another one. My parents ended up sending that one back, so, I figured I might as well put one and one together. That ended up being blessing in disguise because I was able to be twice as efficient. I would put the 16-35 zoom on one (camera), then I would put my 70-200 telephoto on another, and basically create a sequence of wide and tight shots and vary that. Or even just have alternate angles, being able to do more with less.

I’ve always been fascinated by tilt shift. It’s another way of looking at the world that is highly unfamiliar to us and novel. It’s gimmicky. But at the same time ….

It produced some pretty striking shots like that opening morning scene at the capital.

Yeah. What’s really interesting to me about it is the perspective-control aspect of it. That’s why I’m very fond of it. It allowed me to show the majesty of this castle we have in the middle of Austin. It’s cool you can use that technique to create that extremely narrow and sharp point of focus, where everything else becomes so blurry it looks miniature.

What specific lens is that? What is a Ukrainian tilt-shift lens?

So I’m actually an intern with the Texas Tribune, I graduated from UT in May. So I was a student on a budget, now I’m an intern on an even tighter budget. I have always tried to come up with solutions by mixing and matching and turning my camera into something of a Frankenstein. I ended up finding this lens made by a company called Arsat. It’s a 35 millimeter f/2.8 tilt-shift lens. It’s totally manual. There’s nothing electronic in the lens, which is why it was $640 or whatever.

Is that on Amazon or something? Where do you find that?

Yeah, Amazon. I looked at the reviews and it was kind of an impulse buy. But I think this will allow me to do things I want to do. Sometimes I feel limited by the format of photojournalism, not because of the medium itself, but because of how inundated we all are with images. Sometimes it takes something striking to make people slow down and look at things.

So you had two cameras. And they’re both Canons, so that’s nice. Do you set the saturation and sharpness and brightness settings to all neutral, and try to match the white balance settings to make sure all the pictures come out with the same look?

To a degree. I did try to create a consistence aesthetic. I set the (camera’s) shutter speed to one second, and I used the intervalometer to take a shot every five seconds. Between five seconds and three seconds, depending on how much time I was going to have. When I was in the House, I basically had to fight my way in. They wouldn’t let me use a tripod, so I had to ask somebody if I could borrow their seat for 10 minutes, then I basically put the camera on the chair and put the lens on my wallet so it would get to the right height, and pretty much left it until they dragged me out of there.

As far as the actual workflow goes, I shot in jpeg small. I’ve done time lapse in the past and shot jpeg medium, and it was a little bit difficult to process. You really don’t need that much information in each frame. Because 2K is already a killer resolution. That’s jpeg small. So I shot, you know, several thousand pictures. Then I just dropped each scene into a folder after I imported them, then I dragged them to Lightroom. Adobe Lightroom. What’s special about it is that you can batch-edit images. You can not only control the color, the exposure, hue saturation, everything, you can also crop all the photos.

So that’s very handy.

Yeah. What’s also great is you can use a spot correction tool that will apply to the photos across the board, which is great. So, for example, the last shot, I had to shoot at f/16 in order to have long exposures to make it smoother. Because if you shoot in aperture priority and you have a wide aperture, your shutter speed’s going to go a lot faster. And faster shutter speed makes for a really choppy time lapse. So I try to keep everything no faster than half a second. So that sometimes meant shooting at f/16. And when that happens — I’ve been using these cameras all over the country, all over the world, and they’ve gotten pretty dirty. No matter who cleans it, my sensors are very, very dirty. So at f/16 you can really see that. And what’s great about Lightroom is you can go in, the dust specks aren’t moving, so the program is actually able to correct the spots based in the data around each unique point in that image. So it totally gets rid of them.

You mentioned the shutter speed. I was going to ask about the really nice blurring effect of the people who were walking around. So you achieved that by using a slower shutter speed?

Yeah. And what I also bought was an ND filter so I didn’t have to worry as much about closing down my aperture and I could focus on just getting the proper shutter speed, which is the most important part of the time lapse.

So this is the filter that lets less light in.

Yeah, a neutral-density filter. All it does is it cuts down the amount of light. I had it on for the entire time and it made it so much easier. If I wanted to get a shot of the Capitol during bright sunlight and the clouds are going to be streaking across the sky, the only real way to accomplish that at a slow shutter speed would be with an ND filter.

So at some point after you’re done doing the batch edits, then you have to create the video. Are you using a Mac or a PC?

I use a Mac and I edited on Adobe Premiere. Because Premiere just has an incredible work flow for both photo and video. So I broke up all the individual shots in the different folders and I made sure I sequenced them. So for example, “ExteriorCapitolDome_001.” Then I just sequenced it to the last picture. Then when I went into Adobe Premiere, there’s an option to import an image sequence. So as long as the files are named consistently, it will import all of that as a single clip. It was so incredibly easy to edit. Almost stupidly easy to edit.

I think you mentioned you used 24 frames per second?

Yeah. That’s the frame rate for motion pictures, film. That’s what the movie guys do, so why not?

Did you get any weird looks from people while you were shooting?

Oh yeah. Everybody thought they were going to get in the way of my picture. And it’s hilarious because we’re journalists, I’m like, ‘Please, ignore me. I swear to God, I want you to be in my picture.’ It’s just kind of funny. I was just surprised none of the state troopers told me to move. It was pretty easy, aside from trying to finagle my way into the House, it was really incredibly easy. And people were totally cooperative. There was one time I had to basically guard my camera and make sure nobody knocked it over the rotunda.

That would have sucked.

Yeah. That would have been real bad. So I just used the good ol’ body shield to take care of that.

What kind of feedback did you get from folks after the video was made?

Some people said, ‘This is the best thing to come out of the Texas Legislature in years.’ So that was kind of a compliment, I guess.

The soundtrack was cool. What kind of process did you go through to find that? Finding the perfect song can sometimes be tedious but rewarding, you know?

That actually might be the funniest part because that’s actually my band.

Oh, really? Well there you go, so you got the copyright to it.

That’s exactly why I did it. It’s short turn around, you know? I live in Austin, I’m a musician. I play in this incredible band with 20 other people. We’re basically a mini orchestra. I play accordion and piano and a couple of instruments, and we got cellos, violins, bassoon, upright bass, horns, sax, percussion. We’ve got everything. … I’ve always got symphonic music to go with the things that I make. It’s really an incredible, incredible blessing. I wouldn’t do it to get my band’s music out there, because that’s not the purpose of this video. It just so happens to be a convenient and efficient way to use the music.

It can be difficult finding the right song. You have to wade through a lot of Creative Commons tracks on SoundCloud or whatever. It’s hit or miss. When you find the right one it’s great. But just getting there can be quite the journey.

I’ve had to do that so many times, just trying to find the right song. What’s funny though is I basically chopped the song and edited it to fit into the duration of the time lapse, so it’s kind of like I’m destroying the integrity of my own music. But it’s for the greater good.

How long did this project take to work on from conception to final upload up to Vimeo?

Well, I basically started … I woke up at 4 a.m. on Tuesday. Basically started shooting around 5:30 because I wanted to get the sunrise behind the clouds, basically just the lights turning on in Austin. And I stopped shooting at five (p.m). And I processed all the images throughout the night. I just kind of threw the images into Lightroom, I cropped them, I did whatever color correction I needed to. Then the next day when I as at the Tribune, I put the images into Premiere and I was ready to spend all night editing it. Then I was just like, ‘Eh, maybe I’ll find a song, see how the song works.’ Then I was like, ‘Eh, I don’t want this to be three minutes, I’ll see if I can tighten this up.’ Then after that it was like, ‘Eh, let’s see what kind of sequence and order I can make.’ Then I was like, ‘Oh man, I’m almost done.’ That was an hour after I picked a song. Part of that is because I’ve been editing since I’ve been 11 years old.

For people who want to try time-lapse projects like this, do you have any tips for them?

Yeah. Intervalometers. That’s No. 1. Intervalometer and a tripod. It doesn’t matter what kind of camera you got.

One can decide how they want their time lapse to feel based on the duration of the shutter. So if one wants it to be extremely intense and choppy and frenetic and you can see the strides of individual people as they’re walking around, then you have a fast shutter speed. That’s a little bit easier to to, especially if you’re shooting in daylight.

But if you want that sort of smooth blurring where it’s really not so much people as it is shapes cascading in and out of the frame, then you use a longer exposure.

Do you think web videos, web-savvy techniques like this, do you think more journalists will be picking up these skills in the future? Is this pretty much a given?

Yeah. I mean, I really think that whatever techniques anybody can think of to tell a story are going to be used now, more so than ever. Especially if it’s alternative. Because, like I was saying earlier, we’re surrounded by so much of the same. And a lot of that information is valuable and extremely important. But at some point, it can begin to become repetitive to the average viewer. So, finding alternative ways to communicate and kind of rekindle that reaction is something everybody is figuring out how to do.

I’ve been trying to think about applying (time lapse) to more substantive journalism. This was a cool-looking project. It showed the excitement of the Capitol. But as far as issues go or substantive journalism goes, I don’t think it would rank very high on that scale. But my family is Israeli, and I’ve done a lot of work in Israel, documenting the refugee population that’s migrated from Africa fleeing political oppression and difficult economic circumstances. What I could maybe use time lapse for is to show the part near the central bus station where, you know, between 50 and 100 refugees sleep every single night because they don’t have a place to be. Potentially using time lapse as a way of focusing on the moments between the moments that we sometimes miss when we see documentaries or when we see photos.

So this isn’t just a gimmick. You can use these techniques to tell some really powerful stories.

Yeah. That’s what I’d really like to try to do.

The post How to make stunning time-lapse videos: Q&A with photojournalist Tamir Kalifa appeared first on John Tedesco.

I shot some video over the weekend but it was so windy most of the audio was obliterated.

So I ended up making a music video.

It wasn’t exactly what I planned. But maybe it was better.

The post Sometimes Plan B is better than Plan A appeared first on John Tedesco.

Bracken Bat Cave, home to the largest concentration of mammals on the planet with 20 million Mexican free-tail bats, is opening up to the general public for a brief period.

This is awesome.

Related: A review of the Sigma 17-70mm lens for videographers

A few years ago, Jen and I saw the surreal exodus at dusk. So many bats fly out of the cave to feed, they create their own vortex.

Express-News Photographer Billy Calzada shot a very cool video of the bats in action. Check out the time-lapse photos.

The post Daily Diversion: Bracken Bat Cave appeared first on John Tedesco.

Abso-freakin-lutely.

Time-lapse videos are full of awesome sauce. Most I’ve seen involve the placement of a camera in a stationary location. But another cool method is taking the camera with you and snapping a photo every few seconds. It creates a cool first-person view of a journey or event.

Related: A review of the Sigma 17-70mm lens for videographers

I’ve tried this technique a few times after seeing this video of a trip from Denver to Singapore by David DAngelo. I thought it was a cool way to show what the whirlwind journey was like:

Most types of video editing software allow you to import a series of still images. When Jen got back I copied the photos to our hard drive at home and fired up Sony Vegas.

In Vegas you can import photos two ways. One is to go to “Options,” click on “Preferences,” then “Editing.” There you can adjust the sittings for the length of still images when you add them to your project. You can also have the images overlap slightly for a smoother look using cross fades.

For Jen’s project, the photos were at 3 frames per second:

Another options is going to “Project,” then “Import Media.” Check the box “Open still image sequence,” then select the photos you want to import. Vegas will merge all those photos into a single file for your project:

The finished product gives people a taste of it’s like to walk the High Line in a way that a traditional news article can’t do very well. These kinds of videos aren’t just trendy — they help journalists tell better stories.

The post How to use time-lapse photography to take viewers on a journey appeared first on John Tedesco.

“Trash Day,” a hilarious video by Sam Lerma at KSAT, was featured on Vimeo this week. It’s the story of a woman’s obsession with her garbage man, based on an actual Craigslist ad, which says: “You are the hottest garbage man I have ever seen.”

Related: A review of the Sigma 17-70mm lens for videographers

It only gets better from there …

The post Daily Diversion: Trash Day — a Craigslist personal ad come to life appeared first on John Tedesco.

Thankfully, this isn’t wishful thinking. Check out Express-News reporter Vianna Davila’s video showing the impact of Hurricane Alex in the Rio Grande Valley. Notice how this video is a mini-documentary — Vianna is simply an observer showing us the sights and sounds of a major storm.

Related: A review of the Sigma 17-70mm lens for videographers

I’m a big fan of these kinds of online videos, where the reporter is unobtrusively giving viewers a sense of place. For some stories, like a hurricane making landfall, the news article and the news video can compliment each other nicely.

The post Video: Covering Hurricane Alex with no crazy media stunts appeared first on John Tedesco.