It’s a little hard to believe – but I’ve pretty much ignored video as a medium. This isn’t because I don’t believe in the power of video – but mainly because of technological issues. After all, in 2008 when I graduated from the University of Hawaii – my main focus was anthropology and my secondary focus was film making through the Academy of Creative Media. But here is where the issues with technology arose. I left Hawaii with a small suitcase (carry on) and a backpack. I brought a Sony Handycam and a Vaio laptop with me. I had a huge and heavy external hard drive that I left behind. I had professional grade software for film editing on the Vaio but the storage technology in 2008 was such that importing and using raw video files wasn’t really something that could be done on a rig as light as mine. When my Vaio failed in 2009, I opted to go lighter and moved all of my web work to an Acer Netbook with a 10-inch screen. My Razr Flip-phone took video and I would sometimes take video with my 8, 10, or 12 megapixel cameras – but mostly the quality was terrible and the editing I was now doing on a Windows Movie Maker freeeware program was sub-optimal.
It was during this time from 2008-2012 that Youtube as a platform took off. While I was building Vagobond and writing a half dozen books on my netbook – the pay off for struggling to make bad video just wasn’t worth it. And, to be honest, I was a bit camera shy which probably didn’t help. Moving back to the USA in 2013, my priority became building my antique shop, my small community newspaper, and moving my family to Hawaii.
It’s only now – a decade after I left Hawaii that I find myself with the proper technology and time to sort through my old video and put them together as something hopefully interesting. The sound I recorded on my flip-phone, my cameras, the handy cam, and then my progressively better smartphones was terrible – so in many cases I’ve cut the sound and replaced it with music. I’m still not some rich guy with great tech – but I recently bought a Macbook Air and my iPhone 6s does decent video – so hopefully the quality of these videos will improve as time goes on. My mission is to first sort through and use my old footage and then to start creating new videos. I’m less camera shy now – so you’ll probably see more of me in future videos.
I’ve created a new YouTube Channel “Vagobond Travels’ – the name is a bear until I get 100 subscribers, but then I can change it to something easier to remember. So, please click through now and pound that ‘Subscribe’ button.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCvV2_3gHVl6NKf6jBBSnHzw
Unfortunately, right now if you search for it on Youtube or Google, Google automatically corrects the spelling to Vagabond so you get lots of other peoples channels. I’ve also started to put my older videos on a specific page here Vagobond Travel Videos
To get you started – here is the first video I’ve put together from my old clips – it has a few clips from Hawaii and my trip across the USA before I left for Spain in January 2009.
and here’s an old favorite called Hawaii Chicken – if you skip to the end you will see how I got to Hawaii