My days on the hill are taken up by skiing and photography. I don’t hesitate to admit it, blogging is my second favorite sport.
Good photos are key. For one thing, people are much more likely to read what you’ve written if you have sharp, imaginative images. Moreover, the words seem to come more easily when I’ve got five or six solid shots.
On the other hand, we rarely post original video on NYSkiBlog. It’s takes knowledge and energy to create compelling motion pictures. Even if I was capable, taking good video takes too much away from the experience of skiing. As evidence: there is only one video posted on our YouTube channel.
Which brings me to the lone one-minute video above.
On March 23, 2013 I had one of my best ski days of last season. I arrived at the Ski Bowl in North Creek, booted up, and headed out for adventure. It snowed much of the day and conditions were really good — especially in the trees — and as we worked our way up the mountain they got better. But this isn’t a trip report.
I don’t claim to have full control of any camera I’ve owned and this day was no exception. I had just booted up at the Ski Bowl Yurt and was waiting for the groomers to finish. I shot this video 100% inadvertently: I never knew I was filming until I downloaded at the end of the day.
What I was trying to do in this case — what I thought I was doing — was taking stills. You can see little glitches in the video at several points where I pushed the shutter.
I think it might be the best video I’ve captured. I’m not saying it’s art, but I see something in it. I can’t decide if that’s because it reminds me personally of a great experience or if there really is something to it. In any case, maybe a lack of consciousness is exactly what my art and life require.
It’s also occurred to me that the act of posting the video above shows how far I have to go. “Look ma, no hands!”
Darn, that looks a lot like the yurt that used to be at Mt van Hoevenberg.
Good eye Peter, it is the one 🙂
Looks like a great start to the day to me!
(glad you didn’t wander into the bathroom with the cam on…)
I can sympathize. I post a number of online ski trip reports each winter. My technique for still photos is to take about 50 a day and hopefully get 3 or 4 pictures worth sharing. Even better if some of the good shots include friends or individuals who might read the subsequent trip report. I’m definitely out to have a fun ski day first, capturing decent images comes second.
Video is another animal. As we’ve all seen, there is a ton of crummy POV vids out there that aren’t worth looking at. I’m guilty of posting more than a few. Video is hard because you need good skiers, terrain, and editing to make it interesting. Despite your reasonably coherent unconscious effort in this post, just turning on a helmet-cam and letting it run for an hour until the batteries die is usually not too helpful because you end up with a huge editing job to get 3 good minutes of vid which will lose much value if you can’t process and post it promptly enough to also represent a current conditions report.
Regardless of photos and video, good prose still means a great deal to most of us and NY Ski Blog provides a lot of that. Thanks!
captures the feel of the bowl well. the bowl isn’t for everyone, low on comforts and convenience. it does add an adventure feeling requiring thought on how to make the most of gore to add up to a great day like that one.
That was a good day.
One cool aspect of the video is that Harvey is the only skier there!
I didn’t know the history of the Yurt. Peter: what stands in it’s place at MtVanHo?
It seems that there is no one to let the Ski Bowl secret out of the bag. This was a Saturday, and I was basically alone.
How to say this?… I appreciate the gentle response to this post.