Hey Everyone! Hope your week and day are going well. This week I want to talk about something a little different. Bikes and Photography. If you follow me on social media you know I've been doing a lot of biking in the last few months and posting videos of my adventures. Now I'm not a big video guy but bicycles and video seem to go together quite well. I use a GoPro (an older one) and I use iMovie from Apple to edit my movies. I have taken most of my ideas from Robert my Photography Wingman who is an excellent video maker and story teller. Making video is a lot harder than making a photograph .  There is a lot to it and you must tell some sort of story when making the video. Then there is the audio that goes with it which may me more important than the video. I don't do a lot of talking in my video's mostly music which I try to find music that is free and that I won't infringe on anyones copyright . To me picking out the music is the hardest part because it becomes the backbone of the video. So lets talk about hardware that I use.

Being able to shoot steady video is a must and you should be able to do it safely. If you're on a bicycle and pedaling you don't want anything to distract you so you don't get in an accident. If you are holding your camera in one hand then that hand is not on the handlebars making it more dangerous. So I have my camera/cameras attached to something.  I have one GoPro attached to my handlebars via a snap mount. This mount uses magnets to secure the camera to the mount which makes removing it easer to change batteries or just remove the GoPro at the end of the day. I highly recommend these mount as I tried to do it cheaper with mounts I already had but didn't work nearly as well as the Snap Mounts do. The magnets attach to the GoPro and to the mount itself so they "Snap" together. When you take the GoPro off of the mount you can attach it to any metal surface and it will stick. Like a pole or refrigerator. It also opens up and can be used like a small tripod. The other mount I sometimes use is a helmet mount that goes on my helmet. This gives the viewer the point of view from head high so as I look around the video pans with me.  I can control the one on top of my head either by pushing a button or by using my phone via bluetooth. My phone is also attached to my bike handlebars and use it for navigation , milage and the such so with the tap of the screen I can turn the helmet camera on and off. The one on the handlebars I just use the button on the camera. I don't run the camera all of the time but take maybe 20 or 30 seconds snapshots of the ride along the way. Trying to pick out interesting things to see for the viewer. Then in post I put all of these little snapshots together to make a story.

Software: Like I said before I use iMovie . This is a very simple program that comes with Macs. It is very easy to use and it is drag and drop. You can insert Text and photo's into the movies you make along with the music clips that you are using. It puts everything on a timeline. You can cut and trim the video clips to make them more story telling and you can blend them together so the video is smooth not choppy .  There are much more professional video editing programs out there but for me this is the easiest one for me to use. When your video is finished you can export it out as a file or send it directly to Facebook or Youtube. I usually make a file and then send it to Youtube where I link it to Facebook if I want to . Depending on the quality that you shoot the video you can put out in 4k if you shot it in 4k. I usually shoot in 1080 that works for me. Here are some examples of my biking videos.

Autumn's End, Neuse River Trail 30.5 miles, 1st Bike Packing/Touring Trip

Please checkout my videos. Well that's enough for today on video and bikes. Until next week Get out and Shoot. 

Hey if you want to check out my photography go to my instagram account Max Stansell Photography there are over 2000 post there. Here is the link

 Max Stansell Photography Instagram Link