Tips For Filming Stock Video On Your Travels

Traveling for vacation or to film stock video / photographs is a great way to add a lot of content to your portfolio, the key to maximize this opportunity is planning and having a shoot list that you can fall back on. I include photographs as much as footage when I do stock images as we have DSLR cameras that can do both. Here are some tips I have developed after traveling quite a bit through this world of ours.

Take two cameras, they don't have to be the same model, but if you have gone on a once in a lifetime trip at huge expense it would be terrible to have an equipment malfunction. I have a Canon 7D and a Panasonic TM700 both for video. I normally set my Panasonic up to do a time lapse using the auto time lapse feature, using a one second interval to create slow clouds and 10 second intervals for that speedy look of clouds zooming by. The Panasonic is useful because I can pocket that camera and have it with me when a full DSLR set up is too heavy and bulky.

Lay your equipment out on a table or floor before you pack your camera bag and then think to yourself, I can't film everything, I can't carry everything and reduce the equipment to a core level. Looking at old National Geographic magazines, the majority of photos that are published are taken with a wide angle lens. You can produce a vast array of clips and photographs with two to three lenses, I have a Tokina 11-16 f2.8, great for dramatic ultra wide scenes, I use this lens a lot. Then I have an old Nikkor 24mm f2.8, this lens is small compact and light, great for everyday wide shots on a crop sensor DSLR, then I have the fantastic Canon 50mm f1.4 the wide aperture is amazing in that it holds me at ISO 160 more often in lower light. For the big telephoto shots I use the Panasonic TM700 and will use the optical zoom to 30x as the footage is still very crisp and usable for stock video. A long lens on a DSLR in a mild to windy conditions is extremly difficult to lock down, you easily end up with micro movement and unusable clips.

Once at your destination think tall, look up and find the highest ground, maybe a tall building a hill etc and use it to get the aerial footage that street bound shooters don't see. When passing through airports always grab some clips, it is so rich in stock imagery.

Think small and close up, capture the cameo shots that describe the culture where you are, often the wide open vistas are great, but it's the close up shots that tell the story on a human scale, reducing the clutter and concentrating on a more graphically clean shot.

Film people going about their daily lives, a lot of people feel self conscious about doing this, if you are in a tourist area and people are making a living from tourism and they are doing something interesting, they expect to be photographed and filmed. Unless you speak the language and have a shot of the person isolated without logos etc, forget asking to get a Model release form signed, just go for editorial shots. If you can speak the language be prepared to give money in exchange for the signature.

Shoot first then ask, I have found being polite and asking permission to photograph / film usually these days gets a refusal, film first quickly, when asked to stop shooting comply immediately and just go into the tourist holidaymaker idiot routine. Never tell anybody abroad you are a pro photographer or filmmaker, you need visa's to do this and a tourist visa wont cut it. One exclusion to the shoot first idea, if you are in a country that does not have the same personal freedoms as we are used to in the western world be very careful.

Buy memory cards on sale, they are getting very cheap and buy smaller 16GB or less that way if you have a card failure you haven`t lost everything. I do carry a couple of hard drives to download cards into, but I never clean a card abroad. I bring the card back with the images still on it and on a couple of hard drives just for safety. I don`t process images when I`m traveling but I do have a large bag of memory cards.

Try and be creative and bring a new look to over photographed landmarks, research your location and don`t forget to shoot early morning, late afternoon and twilight, you can go to the world`s most famous tourist destinations very early in the morning at sunrise and be in a ghost town alone and when most tourists are eating dinner, again he crowds will be a lot less.