Video: Rainy Day on Capitol Hill

I’ve been working on my video and Adobe Premiere Pro abilities. I won’t lie – I’m at a pretty basic level. I’ve gone back and forth with video for a while now. I was late to the YouTube arena, but I now follow several photographers and film makers. They are doing amazing things with DSLRs, mirrorless cameras, and drones. I think it’s a critical skill for freelance photojournalists, photographers, travel writers, etc.

It’s daunting, though. More gear, more software to learn, more software to pay for, more hard drives. And that’s the easy part. Have you ever gone out and tried to put together a coherent, compelling video? Those successful and creative YouTubers we’re all following make it look easy.

My main hesitation, though, has been content related. I don’t think the world needs another white guy walking around filming himself with a selfie stick. I have some ideas for some projects, but I haven’t been able to get my head around them. We’ll see.

Anyway…a couple of days ago it rained all day here in Seattle. It was gloomy. Capitol Hill was quiet and melancholy. I wanted to see if I could capture some of that feeling. I shot this video on Fujifilm’s X-H1. The editing is choppy, and I’m questioning some of my white balance / color grading choices. But overall I’m happy with it, mainly because it helped me accomplish my objective of getting enough clips to work with in Premiere Pro. Nothing fancy – practice a basic workflow that included the following: import, preview, assemble, add music, trim, and export. [The music is “Rain” by Valler Nowak on the Epidemic Sound site.]