It’s 9:45am and I’m fresh from the airport (fresh is probably not the correct word here) from Orlando sitting in my Baltimore office trying not to throw myself off the roof out of sheer desperation for sleep.

I have a shoot at 1pm, so I figured I’d squeeze in a little blog post in-between planning and emailing this morning. This weekend Ryan and I explored two places: Saint Augustine, like we do every year, and Disney’s new Pandora park at Animal Kingdom. If you aren’t familiar with Pandora it’s the fantasy land in which the Nav’i live in the movie Avatar.

Instead of taking a thousand photos I decided to try something new – video blogging or vlogging. I’m trying to get better at shooting and editing video at work so I figured that I should be utilizing every chance I get. Right now I’m just using my iPhone for personal vlogs, no pressure. The iPhone 7+ is phenomenal in low-light and really surprised me at how well the video quality is. I knew it was good when I got the phone, but like, it’s REALLY good.

Saint Augustine

Ryan and I go here every year for our anniversary date, this year makes the third time. Ryan has a thing about heights so this year was especially noticeable because he climbed to the top without having a panic induced meltdown. I was super proud of him and it made it all that more enjoyable of a day. The view is nice from the top when you can enjoy it. I always think that taking still photos and documenting every thing “saves” the moment. In reality, photos and the act of taking them are anticipated memories of the present. In our anticipation how much of the actual memory do we lose? Do we give up our ability to see outside the framing ratio when our eye is focused on a composition? I tried to not do that as much this year and just chill in the moment and experience rather than my anticipated memories of it. A video clip here and there allowed me to piece together the day at the end of it, not during it like I would with stills. It allowed me to explore a new work flow and I had a lot of fun with it.

[song used is “Close to Me” by The Cure]

Pandora

The next day we went to Pandora. They’ve been open for a month or two now, but it’s much better to go when there aren’t mobs of people everywhere. I loved it. It’s a pretty strong contender for Harry Potter World to be honest. I didn’t get on the flying ride; a one-hundred and thirty-minute wait is NOT worth it to me. I did get on the river ride and in my opinion it was one of the most realistic Disney rides I’ve ever been on.

[song used is “Jake’s First Ride” from the Avatar movie soundtrack]

Thanks for reading my first *actual* vlog. They were a lot of fun to make! I shot everything on my iPhone 7+ and edited everything on my iPhone with a handful of different apps – a list I’ll revisit in a later blog post.