So Many Pictures, So Few Videos

I'm not embarrassed to admit I take a lot of pictures, maybe too many.  I use my iPhone from time to time, but I much prefer my Nikon DSLR.  I love the crispness of the photos, the ability to selectively focus, and adjust settings to work with the lighting available.  I love capturing motion without unsightly blur.  I love that even when the ISO is bumped up to insane numbers, the noise in the picture is still minimal when compared to the noise I get on my dratted phone. 

Yet, there is one thing that phone does better than my expensive Nikon equipment: it takes decent videos.  If I use my Nikon, you can hear the autofocus mechanism in the audio track.  It whirs and clicks, clicks and whirs, as the sensor struggles to keep the subject in focus. The iPhone, on the other hand, does not distract the viewer in such a way.  It just records.

The thing is, though, that I forget about the wonders of recording.  Pictures are great.  They are.  I love them and will always treasure those I've collected over the years.  Yet, I am a little upset with myself when it comes my video collection.  It is dreadfully small, shamefully so, because it was not treated with the same obsessiveness as my photo collection.   

I used to record the boys a lot when they babies and I would save them to VHS because that was the technology available to me at the time.  I know the videos made it to the new house, but then they were lost.  It's heartbreaking to think I'll never hear how sweet their little baby voices were when they were toddling around.  I've looked for those VHS tapes a number of times without any luck.  I still hold out hope they will magically appear, but I know it's not going to happen. 

As the boys grew I continued to record them.  As technology changed, I saved them to computer hard drives, DVDs, and external drives.  Few of them have made it onto the web.  This needs to change.  I need to get better about editing and uploading what few videos I take.  I need to do this because I know I will regret it if I don't.  DVDs get scratched or broken.  Computers crash and hard drives aren't always recoverable.  The same can be said of external drives.  The cloud, though, seems a bit more reliable.  I should be uploading them there for safekeeping.  

I should start doing that today.