Behind Photographing Brasov

INTENTION

Before I begin, I want to lay out my intention in making these videos. First and foremost, these are for me. I recognize that they don't and never will have mass appeal, and that's just the nature of the internet right now. I understand why videos like mine are inherently less engaging, and I'm alright with that. I say they are for me because I make them as time capsules of my experience. They represent a chunk of my life, the things I saw, and the photos I took. Their prime function is to document, in a beautiful way, how it felt to be in each respective place. This most recent video represents my day-to-day life in Brasov for the past six weeks. The promenade Allie and I would walk, the town square we'd people-watch in, the parks, the architecture, everything we'd fit into a regular day made it into this video. I'm excited to relive those things from October of '22 someday in the future. I don't have specific stories to tell. As much as I admire narrative/journalistic work, it's just not my thing. I've found that I'm particularly drawn to aesthetics at this time in my life, and maybe that will change, but for now, I want to take in the quiet life of things. Maybe the story will come with time, with more experience. The internet is chock full of narrative work that feels rushed and reaching, and I'd prefer to do neither. I'm making these videos to pull back, slow down, and display what I find beautiful. They're for me, but if you also find them beautiful, they're for you too.

SHOOTING PHILOSOPHY

How I shoot these videos perfectly mirrors my intention. If the videos feel peaceful, serious, dreamy, or raw, those are likely the conditions I experienced while making them. For instance, my time in Valle de Bravo had me a little on edge. Being my first time in the city, having only recently arrived Mexico, the video was supposed to reflect that daunting feeling. It's important to me that I'm congruent in the way that I shoot with the way that I feel, or else the video tends not to work for me. These videos are personal projects, so I have the flexibility to make that call. If they were for a client, I would need to disregard that state of mind. I'd say that's why these are so sporadically created. Unlike photography, where everything at any time is photographable, I'm extremely selective with what I turn into videos.

With that, I'll touch on some actionable steps I take to make videos like these. While I'm no cinematographer, I feel that I have a solid enough grip on photography, and I use that grip to influence my videos. I typically employ a similar process to my street photography, albeit at a much slower pace. Step one, I plant myself in environments I'd like to capture. Things like people, foliage, bicycles, or trains offer up much-needed movement, so I go to places that might have some of those. Step two, I take note of the direction of light. I'm sure there are rules and theories and plenty of nerding-out about stuff like this online, but I've found that shooting into the light adds a little magic on video that doesn't always translate as well to photography. Step three, I look for compositions. At this stage, I'm trying to find natural, balanced frames. If I find a nice backdrop, I need a human element. If I find a nice subject, I need isolation or a clean frame. Chaos can also be good, but it needs to be full and evenly flowing. I want my clips to vary slightly, but they should also express similar aesthetic themes. Step four, I pay attention to color and its relationship to the current lighting, specifically relating to my camera's fondness for them. I'm shooting everything on my Fujifilm X-H1. It's a good camera, but it's no ARRI. I must work with what I have and be aware of its limitations.

I always have some idea of what I'm making. While my video-shooting process is still very street photographer-like, I try to have an idea of how the finished product might look. Even if I'm a mile off, it helps to install a conceptual springboard. It's too easy to get distracted and want to either home in on one insignificant subject or document an entire city. Both are wastes of time. In my videos, I try to move from one location to another, including a mixture of context and details. Once I'm happy with a handful of options, I'll move on to the next spot. I try not to get carried away with any one place, and by no means do I try to shoot everything. I focus on what draws me in, shoot what I'm good at, and leave the rest for someone else. If I'm showing everything, I'm showing nothing.

CAMERA SETTINGS

Shooting on the Fujifilm X-H1 probably has drawbacks, but I feel lucky for my ignorance. I've never used anything better, and, coming from my X-Pro2 (with which I shot many videos), the X-H1 is a dream. It's solved some of the main issues I had with the X-Pro2, like stabilization and a dedicated video function. The stabilization is a godsend, and if you've ever shot video on an X-Pro2, you'll know that there is no preview of what you're about to record. You go from a full-blown picture mode with your fine-tuned settings and 3x2 aspect ratio to a grimy, suddenly 16x9 video upon pressing record. It's not good, and the XH-1 is helping me to forget.

I set all my specific settings when I first got the camera in 2019. I don't remember what I read/watched that told me to make those decisions, but they haven't changed since then. I don't shoot in LOG because I'm not proficient enough at post-processing, nor am I interested enough to spend the time. Lastly, I probably shoot 80% with my 23mm, and the other 20% with my 35mm.

ORDER OF OPERATIONS

Everything begins with a realization. At some point, I feel the need to make a video. Judging by my YouTube catalog, that hasn't happened often. For instance, why didn't I make a video in Spain? Not a clue. Tallinn? Don't know. I leave this series up to chance, and that's fine by me. I'd like to make them more often, but under no circumstances will they be forced. Anyway, after that realization, things move quickly. Having lived in Brasov for a few weeks before I began shooting, I already knew what was important for me to shoot. Once I get going, I make it a point to constantly look over my footage at the end of each day. I'll open a new project in Premiere and drop clips in to see what I like and what I don't. I go out the next day with that information, and I try to avoid shooting things that resemble the clips I didn't like, adapting to the footage that I preferred.

I'm usually completing big chunks of a video at once. My videos don't have very many clips, so that's not difficult, but I'm also picky with what I include. Some days will go by where I think I've captured gold, only to return a few days or even hours later under better conditions, all but voiding the previous footage. For a video like Brasov, I made multiple trips to each location. I normally wouldn't do that for a video, but since I would go to those places regularly, it wasn't out of the ordinary. I shoot much more than I need. For Brasov, over two-hundred clips are culled down to make the final twenty-five. That's a ten-percent success rate. I'd say that most of the initial bunch were viable clips, but they weren't exactly what I'd hoped for. I suppose that's the nature of shooting on the street.

When I can't take it anymore, and I feel that I have enough to work with, I'll start sorting my clips into selects. I'll create a folder within the main folder that holds all of my clips, stored on an SSD drive, and I'll drop the clips that I like into said folder. Inevitably, the folder swells up, but that gives me options. The benefit of creating a folder like this is, just like in photography, that it lets me forget about all the rest. I no longer need to scour the two-hundred-something clips, and instead can focus on the fifty-something that made it through my filter. After that I'll start placing clips on my timeline, cutting out the inevitable shake at the end (shooting everything handheld), editing around bits I don't like, and deleting clips I was wrong about, hurdling them back into the main file where they belong. Then I loosely start to sequence them, cut them to music, and finally color correct and grade them. This is all an exciting part of the process. I'm not good at any of it, I'm just crafty and a little persistent. Let's talk more about that.

SEQUENCING

While I'm not creating these videos to tell a particular story per se, there must exist some semblance of flow. I don't want my videos to feel at all disjointed (as they certainly have in the past). Sequencing is possibly my favorite part of the video-making process. Unlike my photography, video has a clear direction. I tend to photograph random moments in life that can usually only connect via style or place. With video, I'm essentially crafting one long photograph. I can almost rely on the videos to lead the way, telling me where they fit and where they don't. Intuition is a factor here, but specifically, I like to avoid clips that distract from those that come directly before and after. I want a sense of continuity, letting the light lead the way, meaning I shouldn't follow a shot from golden hour with the midday sun. Intrigue should be peppered throughout, not concentrated in one part of the video, and imagery should follow the musical cues as much as possible. None of these are hard and fast rules, but I think they're nice guidelines to keep in mind. Sequencing is an art in itself, in video and photography (think books, but also online sets and the like). Think of it as being a conductor. Sure, an orchestra can play the songs without you, but interpreting the dynamics, the nuance, and the style is up to you.

MUSIC

Music is a way to hijack a viewer's mind, to take it where you want it to go. Visual media shows the viewer what the creator wants them to see, but music makes them feel what the creator wants them to feel. It's hypnotic and lulling, and its partnership with video creates immersion. Allie, my wife, has worked in the music industry since we met, helping supervisors put music to advertisements, television, and movies. Her job is first to understand, often vaguely, what an artist wants to convey, and second, to find matches to that feeling. It's an intensive job requiring incredible attention and intuition. Seeing the time it takes me to find one good song to license, I don't know how she does it.

I like to use music that is unobtrusive but indispensable. I want it to feel flowing and peaceful, even in minor keys. Before starting up the Photographing X series, I scoured YouTube to find examples of music I'd like to use. I didn't know how to mesh the video and photo aspects without throwing off the rhythm, so I got horrifyingly close to resorting to the ubiquitous lofi-beat music. It's often pretty catchy, and every licensing platform has a ton of it. After editing my first video from Mexico with one of those songs, I realized it wasn't for me.

I'm happy that I found whatever music I'm currently using. It varies, but I think it all has something in common. I wanted to avoid overly cliche cinematic music, and many classical pieces are often too bare for my liking. So, in my eyes, whatever I've landed on is a stroke of luck. I use Musicbed to license my music. While they don't have the sheer volume that some other catalogs have, their selectiveness is something I appreciate.

For this video, I used Tony Anderson's Arpege.

EDITING + POST-PROCESSING

Let's start with what takes the most amount of time. After I have the clips sequenced, I begin the editing process. This is where I decide how long each clip will run, how they will play with the music, and probably another round of resequencing until my brain melts. It's a tedious process. There's not much to say here, as most of this is again down to intuition. I will say that I try to vary whether or not I cut to the music, i.e., on the beat. I think it's a hotly contested thing to do, probably seen as amateurish, which I'd argue is me in this regard, but what do I know? For Brasov, I cut loosely to the beat, only cutting to the downbeat on moments I wanted to highlight. I think it worked. All in all, this part of the process takes a lot out of me, and if this weren't a personal project, I'd hire someone else to do it. I don't say that lightly.

When everything is locked in place, and I've caught up on my sleep, I begin post-processing. That includes color correction (by way of white balance), exposure correcting/matching (by way of exposure, shadows, highlights, etc.), and color grading (by way of stylistic choices, LUTs, and all that jazz). During this process, I will often save stills of each frame and import them into a single blank page in Photoshop. I do this to see the visual harmony among the clips. If one seems too dim relative to the others, I'll make adjustments, add the newly processed still, and repeat. There is surely a better way, but as I said, I'm just being crafty. Once the clips look nice and even, I add my personal LUT (look-up table), which, wouldn't you know it, is my Lightroom preset in disguise. I matched all of my preset settings in Premiere, made any necessary adjustments, and saved it as a LUT. For consistency's sake, this worked like magic. I still have to make minor tweaks to the clips, but overall it's a piece of cake.

I didn't want to make a whole section for exporting, so I'll add it here. I export my videos the same way I discovered back when I looked up the camera settings, so I recommend you do that too. I don't know if it varies from camera to camera, so take five minutes to search what I probably did: "best export settings premiere" and you'll have your answer. That said, there's likely information you wish was here that isn't, so if that's the case, you know my email. Reach out to me with any questions, and I'll be happy to help. I can get carried away in crazy directions when making posts like these. I'm sure you understand.