No GH2? Whatev! Make a Sound Slideshow with Images!

I just got back from a short vacation in Paris, and I had a really nice time eating amazing cheeses, breads and cream (with extra cheese). Seriously. I love that country. If there are any French people reading this blog, I’m honored to have you. Anyhow, I was hoping to purchase a Panasonic GH2 to take photographs of Paris, but I was unable to get my hands on one. I decided I was putting too much emphasis on equipment. I liked the idea of shooting HD video in the city of light, but really I just wanted to make something. So I brought my old point and shoot (a Canon SD1000) and my Edirol R-09HR audio recorder. In the end I’m glad I focused on recording sound.

It gets said a lot, but I’ll say it again. Don’t let gear get in the way! In the end, your tools are a distraction. They’re an obstacle. It doesn’t matter if you have a truck load of equipment or no gear at all. Either way, equipment is your biggest obstacle.

If there’s a project that you want to make, don’t let the lack of equipment stop you. If you own a lot of gear, you need to make a point of not obsessing over the gear itself and focus just on making stuff. It’s trite, but it’s true.

If I had a GH2, I likely wouldn’t have brought my audio recorder, and even if I had, I likely wouldn’t have bothered to bring it with me when I left the hotel in the morning. Because I wasn’t focused on shooting photos and thinking of multi-media, I ended up capturing some really intense sounds. I found myself in the middle of a rowdy protest against the Egyptian president Mubarack, surrounded by a flock of unseasonal singing birds, and at mass in Notre Dame hearing the creepiest sounding pipe organ in the universe.

Thanks for checking out this post! I’m officially back from vacation, so stay tuned for another post on Sescom audio cables, and a test of the new Rode VideoMic Pro in the near future. Au revoir!