Our Natural World

[Martin Vavra]

Hello folks. I am just coming off of the UWOL #9 challenge. I am a first time competitor in it, and the experience has inspired me to go bigger. I am very deep passionate about film in nature, and am personally tired of my excuses for not getting out there and doing it. So now I am getting out there and doing it.

I have started "Our Natural World" on my website, and each week will be adding a new episode to it. I have launched episode 1 and 2, and I have three filmed and 4 has begun filming. Each week, I hope to have a new piece that will show whatever facet of nature I can get into.

You can see these episodes on my wedsite, www.galaxysailor.com, or on my VIMEO page under Galaxy Sailor. You comments are most welcome.

I hope you enjoy!

[Annie Haycock]

That's a good start, I hope you can find time to continue. My own good intentions in the same direction are still in the camera!

There is a little bit of repetition in the narrative - about the osprey using its keen eyesight, and about only the bumblebee queens overwintering.

[J. Stephen McDonald]

I enjoyed the Osprey video. You caught an amazing and prolonged struggle the bird had, trying to lift off with a large fish from the kelp bed. I've also discovered that it's almost impossible to follow an Osprey down on its dive, if you're zoomed in tight when it's hovering. Integrating two series of shots, one tight and the other wide, seems to be the solution. Keep up your video work and improvements will come. You have a good sense for detail and give interesting explanations of what you're showing.

Since I'm registered with Vimeo, I was able to download your original source upload and watch it with much better picture quality, than by viewing it directly from them. They compress it to only 1.6 Mbps on a Flash file, while your original source carries about 5.5 Mbps. By embedding the video on your post, you make it difficult to do this downloading. I had to put your screen name on their People Search and go through some extra steps, to arrive at the page with the download button. A posted link to your Vimeo homepage and all your videos, would make it simpler for other subscribers to do this. It's not easy to find your own user account number. You have look around your homepage a bit to locate it. The link to your entire set of videos will have a user number near the end, that looks like the link to my Vimeo homepage on my signature line.