Slow Television

[rebeccmeister]

What with scrottie's sailing obsession, he and I have been watching several different sailing-related series. One of our favorites is Keep Turning Left, created by a British sailor who decided to embark on the project of sailing around the UK. By now he's had to bring the project to a close, but is still generously sharing videos of his expeditions with all of us.

We've made it as far as Season 8, where he's been exploring Orkney. I keep on being just astounded by the landscape there! Flat plains plus steep mountains, no trees anywhere, everything green and still chilly even in the summertime. Also, I'm totally fixated on the beautiful stone houses. Somehow it all helps me keep some sense of aesthetic perspective on my own life and situation.

An e-mail from someone yesterday reminded me of two lingering video projects of my own that I would like to work on, at some point. The first is footage from the year I rowed the Petaluma marathon in the 1x. I was inspired to re-watch the first of the 12, 10-minute segments. I'm still not entirely sure about what I want to do with them. I'm reaching the conclusion that I might just leave them as they are, rather than trying to splice segments together to create some sort of timelapse, because part of the point of the thing _is_ the experience of time.

The second is of my bike commute to work, to provide a picture of what it looks like to bike commute to work in this area. I put the camera on the handlebars and have done some processing to de-shake, but that one would really benefit from time-lapse so viewers aren't stuck watching so many minutes of being stuck in traffic or whatever.

But then, where to host the videos, should I decide to go that route?

Comments

[ivy]

Okay, this is the second place in that general area of the world where I feel like maybe I really screwed up my trip there somehow, because I went to the Orkneys three or four years ago and I was so bored. We'd scheduled several days there and cut it short because we just couldn't find anything interesting to do or look at. We saw Maes Howe and the Ring of Brodgar and then ate in a bunch of weirdly very British feeling pubs and teahouses and utterly failed to find anything like Scots. (I did hate and had not expected the no trees anywhere... before going, I had foolishly thought that since I loved the Highlands, and Orkney was further north, it must be even Highlandier. Hahaha noooope. Also I was cheerfully looking for the castles of Malory's Orkney knights and it turns out that those don't exist, Malory just wanted his characters to be from somewhere far away so he pointed at a map and went "you'll do".) If I were there again, I wonder if I'd do any better in finding things of interest or not.

[rebeccmeister]

I wondered if you'd been!

I suspect that your experience of the Orkneys by land was just about what one could hope to expect from that landscape. But the views from the sea appear to be quite a different experience - a ton of geological features to observe, some interesting and fun sailing conditions, and a lot of stuff for military historians to ogle and explore. This sailor/vlogger is also really into birds and other wildlife, and it seems like there's a lot in that department, as well.

[ivy]

The Shetlands apparently have fascinating geology, but I've been kinda put off exploring them because of how much fun I didn't have in Orkney, heh. Maybe someone does geology tours.