I somehow woke up at 3:30 a.m. this morning; apparently only five hours of sleep is good enough for me today. Being that there isn't much to do so early in the morning, I decided to peruse the never ending void of YouTube. In particular, I watched a video by, Sean Tucker, a photographer that happens to make some videos on YouTube. Sean Tucker doesn't have the biggest following but, if you're a photographer, I would highly recommend at least watching a few of his videos.

I'm willing to bet that we've all heard the phrase, "be yourself", a million times over. It's an idea that should be fairly obvious but, somehow some of us are snagged on how to go about this. For the most part, I think that I've been doing a fairly decent job of going my own way in photography. However, looking to my videos, not so much.

I've already ragged on myself for not making compelling video content in a few of my previous blog posts, and I understand that the self criticism is a bit heavy handed at this point. Upon watching Sean Tucker's video though, I was able to more-or-less confirm the "why" my videos felt so out of place.

Tucker speaks a little bit about feigning a different personality for the sake of making a video, and just how strange it is. The best example he demonstrates is a scenario of if a family member they wouldn't be able to recognize the person in the video. In a way, I've subconsciously been fearing this situation. If a family member were to watch one of my videos, would they be thinking: "Who is this person, is this 'really' Elliot?"

Although I haven't published a video in many months, I still have been filming my activities. As I've been watching other videos on YouTube, I've been trying to find a way that works best for me. No one will be seeing these clips, or failed vlog attempts because they will die on my hard drive. Another YouTube personality that I follow, Chris Eyre-Walker, has just recently released a three part series of his road trip through Tajikistan.

If you have the time to go through all three videos, do so. I think that Chris Eyre-Walker really knocked it out of the part with this series. I've been following him for a bit so I've witnessed his video style change over time. These three videos really struck a chord within me, and I think I might try mimicking his style on my next video (whenever that is).

In my previous videos it was just me droning, and quite frankly, I don't like listening to myself for that long. While Eyre-Walker does speak in his videos in a vlog manner, there is an equal amount of content where there is no speaking. Just his photographs, and some video clips. More importantly though is that he has a story to tell. We'll see when I get my own story...

Admittedly, I find it difficult to film video in parallel with taking photographs. A moment can be either a great photograph, or a great video, but never both because I don't have four hands. So, for now, I have been prioritizing the photographs over the video content.

I have another adventure coming up soon. The Red Rock Balloon Rally in Gallup, New Mexico, is coming up soon (December 1-3). I'll try filming it, and hopefully you may see a video. Time will tell though.