Inspiration found!

While thinking about next week's trip to west Texas, I looked through my library of video and photo books for some inspiration on how I could make this trip a memorable one so I could bring back some wonderful video. Many of my books are more technical in nature — topics like color correction, editing, cinematography, etc.

And then I spotted a cover I hadn't pulled out in quite awhile. Five years ago I purchased Digital Video for Beginners and immediately fell in love with it. While it looks like a very simplistic text meant for extreme beginners, it's actually chock full of tips and tricks on how to make your videos better.

You have to get over the occasional reference to old equipment like VHS tapes and the lack of discussion about HD video or DSLR's,  but almost every page has detailed yet understandable explanation of things like white balance and color temperature. You learn about the myriad of factors that can influence your videos and how to use them to your advantage.

The section on "Shooting Techniques" is fabulous for a family videographer. It contains great explanations on how to incorporate lots of ways to shoot like zooming and panning, over-the-shoulder shots, point of view shots, etc. Just adding a couple of these can take a typical ho-hum amateur video to another level.

The next section on shooting great home movies goes into detail on over a dozen typical genres like kids' birthday parties, family vacations, and sports events. My favorite part of the book are the ideas here on the kinds of videos the average person can do and how to pull them off in quality fashion. Each specific chapter contains a wealth of information that can be carried over to every other situation as well.

You learn about things like shooting what's important, capturing B roll shots, and when to use closeups and wide shots. There are even some cool ideas (e.g., a neighborhood portrait) that you can help your kids with so they will learn about making video, too. Sounds like a good idea for keeping kids busy during the summer as well as a chance to bond with them, huh?

I'm not as excited about the Editing Techniques section as it focuses on older software for examples. What this part is good for is explaining a lot of editing terms which apply to even the most current video editing software. It's so much easier to understand a software manual and get up to speed when you understand the terminology that they use.

The least useful section is the last one about sharing your videos. I don't think it even mentions YouTube and talks about recording to videotape! There's some good introductory stuff daling with making DVDs, but that's about it.

This would make a great Father's Day gift and is a book I'm reading over right now in preparation for my upcoming vacation next week. You can buy it here: Digital Video for Beginners: A Step-by-Step Guide to Making Great Home Movies (Lark Photography Book).