Sophisticated mud, Lady Godiva, big zoom gimbals, and wild garlic steaks - May 2023

45 mph on muddy grass with the traction control working for a full mile at a time. May started off with a few fun dirty days covering some horse racing at Newmarket Racecourse in the pouring rain…

A muddy few days at Newmarket Racecourse

The evenings were a bit more sophisticated. With a hotel in Cambridge, I managed to get out and capture a handful of cool Cambridge stock footage city shots. You’ll find them here in the Cambridge Collection, but here’s an example…. flying low down a Cambridge city street at night….

And then, of course, it was back into the woods.

The wild garlic is at its best this time of year, so I thought it’d be rude to not take advantage of it. I got the steaks out a few times, once on my own, once with my lads, and then filmed a third time. “Steak and wild garlic in an old English woodland”, I’ll stick some YouTube links at the bottom of this post.

I also filmed “a rainy walk through Bluebell Valley’, which is me wandering through the Clent Hills with my camera on a rainy day., no one has watched this, and I also made “Following the woodland stream”, no one has watched this either.

They’re both made in the style I like to make my hiking and adventure films, slow-paced with no talking, focused on the sights and sounds of the location, rather than me. I like it this way, and refuse to make videos that appeal to the YouTube algorithm. Sod that. But with a generic title, and without the honeypot location, they were doomed to the YouTube basement.

Whatever.

I take inspiration from the low view count. I don’t want to appeal to the masses. The masses want fast videos, fast jump cuts, loud music, and people talking with the fake personality of a TV presenter, all charm and cheerfulness in a suit, or an over-caffeinated American teenager on speed. That’s not what these videos are. Far from it. I’ll link them at the bottom.

I also made “Coffee in the woods - May”, of course! Everything smelled and tasted of garlic. Including me.

Oh great, another shot of Chris Homer drinking coffee in the woods

Sometimes you have to think outside of the box…

Way outside of the box. I stuck the Sony 200-600mm lens on a Sony A7iii and threw it into a Ronin RS3 Pro. Don’t ask me why because I don’t really know. It worked, and it was a cool little experiment.

What I’ll do with it exactly, I don’t know, but it was a great proof of concept, and I’ll come up with some ideas for it in the future.

Sony 200-600mm lens in a gimbal

I got out on a few filming jobs in various cities throughout the month including Coventry, Nottingham, and Warwick. I was able to make some of it available in my stock footage collections, I’ll list it here, but please take a look at the video section or contact me for more info.

Nottingham stock video footage — Nottingham

Nottingham video includes Nottingham Forest Football Stadium, Nottingham County Football Stadium, Trent Bridge Cricket Ground, the River Trent, Nottingham Train Station, the power station, the Cathedral, local churches, market square, the council house, Green’s windmill and load of other locations, but with too much football IMO.

Warwick includes a load of cool shots of Warwick Castle, Warwick Racecourse, Lord Leycester Hospital and plenty of cool little establishing shots. It has a separate blog post here - Wonderful Warwick

Coventry includes shots of the Coventry Building Society Arena (the old Ricoh Arena), Whittle Arch, Coventry Cathedral, Council House, Lychgate Cottages, and some very busy town square shots around the Lady Godiva statue.

After the mud of Newmarket, the sophistication of Cambridge, the sporting madness of Nottingham, the wonders of Warwick, the erm, arch of Coventry, one too many wild garlic steaks in the woods, and a moment of madness sticking a 600mm lens in a gimbal…. I went on holiday to Somerset and spent far too long capturing this beautiful shot of Watchet Lighthouse.

May. Out.

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