This is my most recent review of the Vinten Vision Blue tripod head. It was originally posted on NeedCreative’s blog.

I also recommend you check out Tom Guilmette’s review as well.
Buy from B&H Photo.
Vinten’s Specs

This past week I discovered Salomon Ligthelm through Twitter. Honestly, I don’t know much about him. He lives in Dubai, and does a lot of faith-based film work… and his video work is very cool.

I’m impressed with not only his shooting, but also with his color grading and sound design. Salomon does it all. In many ways he’s a one man band, and from the look of his work he does it all very well. To say the least the guy inspires me!

You can see more of his work on his blog: Lightelm

I get the opportunity to share some great stories through working part time with One Life Network. Stories of life change, tragedy, and redemption. These are the stories I enjoy telling the most because they are meaningful to me, and I can give creative input in to how these stories are put together through the medium of video. Of course these are also the stories I want people to see.

However, to pay the bills many of you, like me, I have to do commercial work that can be, at times, less inspiring. I’m fortunate to work with clients that allow me into the creative process of tell their product or services story. The iProp is one such client. Brandon, the owner and creator of the iProp, contracted me to do a product demonstration video.

We came down to a simple 30 second video showing the iProp’s various uses. I wanted to keep it short so people would be more likely to watch it all the way through, and at the same time leave them wanting more info. This, in turn, would drive them to explore the iProp website more. So far this approach has worked well. The iProp demo video is the most watched video I’ve every created and published on the web, with over 20,000 views. There are other videos that I would love to see get more views, but it’s been cool seeing this product take off.

Here’s a recent video I shot and edited for One Life Henderson. The church celebrated 50 baptisms in the month of December. I used imagery of the Ohio river to tie to the theme of baptism. I also wanted to use a local land mark that would tie to the location of the church. The score is U2′s “Beautiful Day” from the album All That You Can’t Leave Behind. It’s an obvious song choice, but sometimes being obvious is good…I hope.

Ask my wife how much I love behind the scenes documentaries and inevitably she’ll roll her eyes. I can’t count how many times I’ve watched the Lord of the Rings behind the scenes documentary. Any DVD we rent I check out the BTS as soon as the movie ends. I love to learn how stories are put together, and why the director chose to do things the way he or she did.

I met Kevin Otterness a few months ago in Chicago, and wanted to share a BTS video he made about a recent music video he directed. Kevin is the Director/Cinematographer/Editor for Posthouse Picture, and it’s very cool of Kevin to take the time to do this.

The title sounds like I’m trying to learn a type of dance, but most of you know what I’m getting at. Time-lapse is a very cool creative tool available to most anyone with a HDSLR. I’ve started experimenting with it myself, but haven’t mastered the technique by any means. Check out this inspirational video by Josh Owens. A great collection of time-lapses he’s done of New York City.

Here’s a great video by Dan Chung and Chris McGreal on the recent Arizona shooting. I appreciate the simplistic approach to how these guys choose to tell the story. There’s no journalist asking questions, and no score to intensify the mood. Dan and Chris told the story through the people and their words.

http://player.vimeo.com/video/10536807?title=0&byline=0″ width=”560″ height=”315″ frameborder=”0″

http://player.vimeo.com/video/14564888?title=0&byline=0″ width=”560″ height=”315″ frameborder=”0″

http://player.vimeo.com/video/14090604?title=0&byline=0” width=”560″ height=”315″ frameborder=”0″