Whales of 2014

Over the holidays, Geordie taught me how to edit video in Premiere. So I took all my 2014 whale and wildlife footage that I took while working and made a highlight video.  2013's highlight video is here. Geordie did the steadying and fancy stuff as that was beyond me but I am pretty pleased at the result. 

It was really hard knowing what to put in, what to take out and accepting that what looked fantastic was sometimes too shakey to actually look any good. I shot over 10 gigs of video this season alone so this is only a snapshot. It may change the way I video wildlife now that I am thinking more in terms of what it will be like on 'the big screen'.  I'll probably try to shoot more steady stuff. We shall see...

The footage was shot between April and October of 2014.  It features an amazing encounter with a humpback and her calf, bouncy Southern Resident Orca, active Bigg's Orca and the lovely seals, birds and sea lions that also make their home in the Southern Gulf Islands and the San Juan Islands.  I am hoping that I get better at wildlife videography every year.

New Years Visitors and the Polar Bear Swim

 We had some great visitors to begin the new year with my cousin Sarah and her husband Aric passing through Vancouver just in time to start the year out by leaping into the sea. We hadn't seen these two since their wedding, so it was really nice to have a full afternoon to catch up and have a proper visit.

 On our way to the water we had the fun of seeing the hovercraft parked on the beach. We always enjoy seeing this thing in the area, so naturally the one time it was open to visitors we were too busy and cold to wait in line for a proper look.

Rounding out our day, here's our GoPro camera footage which Kathryn shot as we charged into the water. Since its in a dive housing, the audio is pretty terrible, so don't crank up your computer volume to try and hear our mutterings and curses, but its as close as you can get to being there without actually having been there.
For those of you that are impatient, things actually get moving around the 1 minute mark.