This piece of advice is less important nowadays when nearly everyone has a fairly high quality camera (or even a 4K) in their pocket as part of their phone. But nine or ten years ago when I visited NYC my phone camera was poop. I used an HD pocket camera and grabbed shots of buildings as we drove out of town to head "home" to Florida.
Years later I would be playing around with a shot of my Pie Tin UFO on Blue Screen and need a background. I chose one of those shots (I recently organized old stock footage into a folder on my computers) as the background and foreground for my sequence.
So, even though you may always have a camera with you, remember to use it. Don't just shoot videos you think will be good on TikTok or Instagram today, but remember to shoot some photos of video clips you MAY want to use later. Especially in places you may not be able to get back to easily and especially in PUBLIC places where the footage will be free for you to use. Hold that phone horizontally so the shots will drop nicely into your movie projects and archive them someplace besides your phone or a cloud you may not subscribe to next year.
This lifetime collection of shots is a great way to remember your travels and where you've been, but as a digital media artist, they are also a part of your ever expanding toolbox. Pieces you can back to that will save you time, money and travel in the future. Inspiration for future compositions. Even if you only use old footage as a placeholder, I find it helpful in laying out shots and figuring out what I need from a new shot to make the composition work better.
Anyway, here is the 12 second video which inspired today's blog. Layout of the layers and such is in the video description.
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