Videos, Photographs and a few Polar Bears for good measure.

If you're of a certain age, you'll remember the at-times miserable marathon of sitting through a friend's essentially silent movies of their summer vacation. Poorly shot video snippets of little Johnny playing the in the plastic lawn pool, splashing around and usually getting beaten upon by his older sibling.

It was a mind-numding obligation for all party guests to coo and awe appropriately, even as each of them was searching for an individual reason to bolt from the room.

For that, and other reasons, I'd always rather stayed away from taking videos of trips. Maybe a few short snippets here and there, but nothing dramatic. Which is funny, because one of my early passions in life was video, and I, in fact, studied television production in both High School and college. So it's not for lack of talent (he said immodestly) but my thinking was sort of the same process which led me to be a late convert to digital photography. I just didn't think it could convey my impressions of a place in an effective way. It seemed, to me, to be uncomfortably close to those homespun images flickering on a silvery stand up screen of my youth.

But there are two forms of video, when you get right down to it. One is a series of motion shots, the other is little more than a slide show of photographs taken. And, as you can see on this page, I've done a few of the latter.

(A little early for Christmas videos, I know.)

So, on a recent trip a traveling companion of ours showed us some videos he'd shot while we were in Europe together last year. Yes, my first response was "really?". Grey screen? So we dutifully trudged to his hotel room where he'd hooked a camera up to the large screen digital tv. For the next half hour or so we watched, and thoroughly enjoyed ourselves talking about the trip, about our memories, and about the vast difference between the modern hi def videos versus those staticky super 8 images of the past.

And, I admit, it does a solid job of conveying the feel of a place, and returning the memories of that voyage. So much so that I shot a few video scenes of my own during the remainder of this particular trip. I haven't yet edited them into something interesting -- simply showing raw footage is great if you were there and can readily recognize what was happening, but without that framing it seems to strangers as little more than a static pan shot of a particular destination.

Earlier this year, and hoarded for my own use it would seem, I took video of the sunrise over Mount Haleakala. Like our friends, I too have video of parts of our European trip, including a gondola ride through the canals of Venice.

So. Hmmm. There are times we need to reexamine why we think certain ways and what we dismiss from our artistic viewpoint. This may be such a time for me.

That noted, I am posting the first videos to my blog. Some of you have seen them before -- most of them are, essentially, music videos for songs from my wife's catalog. There are a couple of Polar Bear videos with different goals in mind, and the quality of the shooting was, to be honest, not my best camera work. Going to take a tripod next time (you'll see what I mean) -- or, more accurately, USE a tripod.

I'm working now, however, on my first combination video/photo combination as an online ad for ye olde blog. My eventual goal is to do an actual online series of travel videos as part of the ongoing broadening of the Thumbnail Traveler brand. We're in our infancy yet, with a long way to go.

If it turns out well, I'll share here.