Halloween Words

Yep! Another Video

I have been working hard this past month on my video editing skills. Most of the videos have been simple. A little editing here and there, add a few cross-dissolves, find some music to fit and Voila! A video.

Today's was one I worked on for a while. I had a lot of video from a major heavy surf event the other week. I knew I wanted to do this one more story-like. It didn't need to be a linear-based video. It was to be a video about the ocean (Gulf of Mexico) and us. I dug through my music and found three pieces to put together to make it about six minutes in length. I then did an outline of the raw video, edited what I had to snippets totaling about 12 minutes. From there it was fitting the right stuff to the music.

Back in the old days of multi-media slide shows (read: predecessors of PowerPoint with soundtracks) we used to say it takes about an hour of production time for each final minute of product. For this video I would say that is probably true.

Anyway, here's the finished product. As usual, enjoy!

Hearing the Changes

I heard the surf shift the other afternoon. I was sitting on the balcony overlooking the beach. I was meditating, practicing some mindfulness, with the surf as the background mantra. The surf had been loud and heavy for the past 24 hours. Even now it was loud, still a roar, the water constantly flowing like a perpetual motion machine. The wind had been a little calmer most of the afternoon. I was thinking how complete silence is not necessary for meditation when the power of moving water is behind us.

Suddenly I became aware that it was quieter; the breakers weren’t sounding as loud or as constant; the roar was more distant, a murmur. My first thought was that I had just gotten used to the sound and I’m focusing elsewhere, though still mindful. Or maybe I was heading into the near sleep neverland.

My wife sneezed and it was at it’s normal sound level. I pondered for a brief second and I realized what was happening. I had just heard the surf calm down. I had heard a transition from one state to another. I had heard the color of the sound of the surf change.

I opened my eyes and looked out at the water. The waves had gotten smaller, the breakers hardly making any noise. It had happened within minutes. As I wrote my thoughts down ten or so minutes later the sound continued to decrease. I checked the beach warning flag and it remained calm. I thought maybe I heard a wind shift but that isn’t what occurred. Or was it?

Over the past few weeks I have been paying a little more attention to the water, wind and weather. I have been seeing how winds from one direction can turn the Gulf into a sheet of glass as it pushes the waves back out to deeper water. Or, like the previous 48 hours, a strong south to southeast wind picks up water and moves it for miles, if not hundreds of miles before crashing ashore. It opened me up to being more aware when today I could hear the changes.

That kind of mindfulness is important to life, I realize. It can mean being aware of a friend’s feelings, the emotion in a situation, the right time to keep quiet. It can help us know when and where we may be getting a direction from a Higher Power. Jazz musicians train to hear chord and key changes so they can be better improvisers.

On the balcony the other day I experienced the wonder of being aware- mindful- of changes. By the time I went inside, it was still calm. There is a slight breeze and it is still from the south. A front will be moving in overnight and that no doubt played into the change I heard. The waves remained but were not as commanding as they had been with the flag barely moving and the palms just rustling silently.

An amazing world we live in.

At Sunset

I am going to be experimenting more with panoramas on my iPhone since I just did something brave and out of the ordinary- I learned how to do it by Googling it on You Tube, which I think is our 21st Century equivalent of the owner's manual.

Therefore: Two beach panoramas. 

First, when standing close to the water's edge

you get this fun U-shaped bay right in front of me.

And since it is sunset I present a really long shadow. 

It is, naturally, on the far left.

This one's not a panorama. (Duh.)

But it was almost a full moon so I managed to get 

that between the trees. The moon is actually

in the picture above, up to the right of my shadow.

If you click on any of the pictures a larger version will show up.

Perspective

Clearwater Beach, FL

April 22, 2006

To myself I am only a child on the beach,
while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me.
-Isaac Newton

Having Fun After the Picture is Taken

I can't resist trying to be artistic. Here is the original, slightly edited for sharpness and contrast only.:

Here's my first edit of it using Paint Shop Pro. It has two layers with blending, opacity, finding some edges and highlighting them etc:

Now, here's the second edit. Same  two layers with some differences in clarity, etc.:

And finally, number 3 edit. This one adds a third layer using Paint Shop Pro's brush strokes to give  it more of a painting look:

Original picture taken in Gulf Shores, AL, last week.

No Two Are Alike

No, I do not have enough sunset pictures. I am still working on it.

02/15/2011

02/16/2011

 

 Sunset at the beach is a particularly magnetic and mystical time. People gather and stare. Awe-struck.

02/17/011

I decided I wanted to take a bunch of my sunset pictures from Gulf Shores, AL, 

since February 2011 and put them in a gallery.

 

02/18/2011

02/23/011

They are all taken about the same time before sunset from just about the same location. I picked one from each day that was at about the right time.

01/28/2012

I was amazed at how different they are, even when they are the same.

02/06/2012

02/14/2012

02/19/2013

Nope. No two are alike, not just because there are different elements in the picture, 

but the sky and the sun itself looks different.

02/20/2013

For No Reason Whatsoever

Other than Steven Wright is just plain funny.....

I have the world's largest collection of seashells. I keep it on all the beaches of the world...
perhaps you've seen it.
--Steven Wright

Works in Progress

There's a divinity that shapes our ends,

Rough-hew them how we will.

--Hamlet

Into the Sunset

Surfer at Sunset

Gulf Shores, AL

02/06/2012

Multi Colors in the Haze

Clearwater Beach, FL

June 29, 2008

Sunset to End Recuperation

The last night in Gulf Shores before heading home at the end of my recuperation may have been the best sunset of the whole 4 weeks. I did another of the HDR pictures, merged on Corel Paint Shop Pro X4 and came up with this not completely realistic view. But it does capture the beauty!

Sunset

Here's the third and last of the music videos I made from our time in Alabama in February 2011. Simply Sunset in Gulf Shores.

Enjoy.

In The Tanks

Here's another video for you. When I showed this one to my wife, she commented, "Have you been hoarding these gems for a whole year?"

I guess I have. This one is from the tanks at the Dauphin Island, Alabama, Estuarium. It has really neat fish and jellyfish. In fact I hope to get back there this year and take a bunch of video of those jellyfish at the end and put together 3-5 minutes of them alone with some special effects, etc.



This recuperation time has sure given me an opportunity to put together some of the videos I have been thinking about for a while. It is low-impact, low-energy, low-activity creativity that keeps me occupied.

And I like it.

Enjoy. More to come.

Alabama Birds

In my taking-it-easy recuperation time the other day I managed to finally get a video from last years trip to Alabama - Gulf Shores, to be exact. I put together some of the bird videos and then added the music. Just for fun with no goal in mind other than to remind me of the Gulf of Mexico and the wonderful flow of the tides.