My YouTube Channel is 1 Year Old
In this blog post, I celebrate my YouTube channel's first birthday. I talk about why I started the channel and show you some of my most important videos.
Another Birthday!
I recently celebrated the first birthday of my blog and now I'm pleased to say that my YouTube channel is doing the same!
My blog was an easy way for me to journal and share my photography stories, but it soon became apparent to me that creating videos would be a natural extension of this. As with most things though it wasn't as straightforward as I thought it might be, but once I had started I was determined to keep going with it and improve.
My First YouTube Video
My first video, which you can see below, was on drone photography. The story was that I would leave my big Nikon camera behind and see what landscape images I could capture using my DJI Phantom 3. Looking back it's a bit rough around the edges, but as a first VLOG, it was to bad!
My first video on my YouTube channel.
After that video, I created a few others with varying degrees of success. I covered topics such as My Top 5 Landscape Photography Locations in Devon, Creating a Custom Google Map, and How to Use ND Filters. I found the filming hard work. There was a lot to deal with on top of just taking pictures. I had to worry about audio, repeat takes, camera position etc. Then back in post-production, I had to learn how to edit, merge audio to video, export and publish. However, once a video was published there was a great sense of satisfaction.
The Big Adventure
What really keeps me creating new content is the fact that people actually watched my videos. Not in huge numbers, not like a Thomas Heaton, but enough people left positive comments to make me want to carry on. Much in the same way people did with my blog.
So when I decided to spend a few days in Glencoe in March I thought it would be an adventure worth documenting.
My Glencoe adventure video really seemed to hit a mark with people and it gave my subscriber count a significant boost. It was another turning point for my channel and rather than doing videos when I could I started adding video to my regular publishing schedule.
The 5 Minute Adventures
While the longer and more adventurous videos are great to make, they are a significant investment in time and can sometimes take weeks to get done. I wanted to create more videos but with a day job and a family, having the time to create long videos was difficult to find.
After a few people commented on how the liked some of my shorter videos and that enabled them to watch them more readily, I decided to start the 5 Minute Photo Adventure Series. The idea was simple really. I would go to a single location, talk about what I had planned, what I was doing and shoot an image. With just a single location and shot to plan for the production time was much reduced and so I could create more videos.
Here is one of my favourite 5 Minute Photo Adventure videos, but you can watch the entire series by clicking here.
The Nikon D850 Video
I was very excited about the purchase of my Nikon D850 and I was fortunate enough to get one of the day of release. In all the excitement I decided to make a video on my initial experiences. I posted up the video and within 24 hrs it was approaching 10,000 views! This was twice as many views as my Glencoe video ever had. There was an obvious demand for D850 on YouTube and thanks to some good timing I think I had managed to capitalize on that.
The D850 video is by far my most popular video and has given me the biggest subscriber boost.
The Future
I've got a number of videos planned in for the remainder of the year. I'll keep doing my 5 Minute Photo Adventure videos and I have a few bigger adventure videos planned as well. I'm also aiming to do a follow-up drone video and a follow-up video on printing. So there should be something there for all my 1900+ subscribers (never thought I'd get that many!).
So have you checked out my YouTube channel? Do you have a favourite video? Is there a video you'd like to see my make or a location you want me to visit? Let me know in the comments below.
Happy 1st Birthday to My Blog
My blog is celebrating its 1st birthday! Read about why I started the blog, what has happened over the last 12 months and what the future holds.
Starting Out
On August 30th, 2016 I published my first ever blog post, We All Have to Start Somewhere. It was very much an introductory article in which I talked about why I had started the blog and what my goals were.
I had been thinking about starting a blog for some time. I wanted a place to share my stories and images so a blog seemed the best place to do it. I already had my website so adding the blog was relatively easy. The challenge, of course, was going to be writing interesting and engaging content for it.
Like a musical artist delivering his first album, I'd had plenty of time to think about my first collection of tracks, or in this case, articles. The real challenge would be to keep the momentum going. I had watched plenty of Fro Knows Photo's Rapid Fire Critique's to know that a blog that isn't regularly updated is a dead blog.
Momentum
To keep my blog alive I made a personal commitment to write a new blog post every week. At first, this was easy as I already had a few article ideas but as time progressed the pressure started to build.
It would have been all too easy to let the idea drop, but I'm not that kind of person. Not only was the blog helping me grow as a photographer, but people were actually reading my content! As soon as people start leaving comments I felt duty bound to continue with the blog. More than that though, and despite the challenges, I was enjoying the process of writing.
Benefits and Growth
So a year on and I'm pleased to say that I have managed to publish a new blog post every week. Some have been short, some long. Some have had videos, some have been opinion pieces. Whatever the nature of the content though, the commitment of writing something new every week has greatly encouraged me to get out much more with my camera and shoot.
The natural progression of this increased time with the camera is that my photography has improved. The action of taking pictures and then writing about it can really make you think about what you did and why. By learning from my successes and failures I have grown as a photographer.
To help get my blog posts and photographs seen by as wide an audience as possible I made sure that each new blog post was shared on Facebook, Instagram, Google Plus and Twitter. This approach has really driven traffic to my site and I have seen a 20 fold increase in visitors to my website. It's very encouraging to know that people want to see your photos and read your blog.
One final benefit of all this writing is that I was recently asked to start writing articles for Improve Photography. This was a fantastic opportunity and one that I have grabbed with both hands! Improve Photography is a great source of information, training, tips, reviews, and articles so if you've never visited be sure you do soon.
My Favourite 3 Blog Posts
Over the last 12 months, I have written about a wide variety of photography topics, but the three blog posts below are some of my favorites. They might not necessarily be the most read, but for me, they are possibly the most important as they either represent significant topics or were a story about moving forward with my photography.
The Future
So what does the future of the blog hold? Well, I'm going to continue with my commitment of posting every week. I'll carry on telling stories of my photography adventures, including all the failures! I'll also share my opinion on various photography topics and share any advice and tips I have. So lots more of the same but I also have some exciting plans for the future so stay tuned!
Do you have a favorite blog post of mine? Is there something you'd like me to cover on the blog? What other photography related blogs do you read? Let me know in the comments below.