04 October 2015

Recently, I've become bored with the notoriously "must be funny" videos of DigitalRev. Also thecamerastoretv didn't put out a lot of content either. I have noticed this more and more now, as I'm at home, caring for my son since nearly ten months. I always watched a lot of youtube videos, starting of with the enthusiastic Gordon Liang of cameralabs.com back in the days.

Recently, I discovered Marius Vieth, an award winning street photographer. His videos were different and I really enjoyed watching him and got involved with his mind-set. Maybe I would be owning only a single lens right now, if I had watched his video about GAS earlier. He refers to GAS as Gear Avoidance Syndrome, which makes an awful lot of sense how he explains it. This experience motivated me to look for other videos about photography rather than gear.

The first guy I found was Ted Forbes. He produces a very informative channel with lots of interesting photographer portraits. He is a very quiet type of guy and you cannot watch his videos while doing something else but I really enjoyed his knowledge.

After Ted came John Free. What an awesome guy! This "old pal" can talk to and with everyone. It is so amazing, watching him walking on the streets and interacting with people. Like a lot of street photographers these days, he is still shooting film. This is not to set himself boundaries but because he knows his skills so well, that it helps him get the camera out of the way. You can learn a lot about anticipation and letting shots go from him. It is wonderful!

Another very talkative mind belongs to Jared "the fro" Polin. I've known about him for a long time. Actually I subscribed to his channel years ago but haven't really bothered about him ever since. Beginning of September 2015 he then started his series 30 for 30, doing 30 rapid-fire critiques in 30 days, consisting of 15 Websites and 15 online portfolios. This series blew my mind and I figured out a whole lot of things about my own website through his critiques. After the 5th episode, I started watching rawtalk, his video podcast. His episode about mirrorless vs DSLR got me laughing like crazy. One of the best comedies, I've watched for a long time! Definitely go there and get started! #tacobellbeccy

After discovering the hilarious rawtalk, I needed something quieter and found the calm being, called bigheadtaco. This guy is a Fuji-Photographer and camera reviewer from Vancouver, Canada. The small Asian guy who has only friends bigger than himself is a passionate street photographer and promotes stores of local businesses in his videos, using them as locations for his reviews. I really like his manner and as with John Free, I am impressed by his interaction with other people. Another very nice aspect of his videos are the guest he invites to them! This channel needs to be watched by everyone nterested in photography, especially occasional and street photographers. His love for the 28mm focal length was one reason for me choosing 28mm for my first "One lens, One month" project.
Through bigheadtaco I also found the channels of Kale Friesen and Erik Kim, which have both their pros but I haven't gotten into them as deep as into the others.

To end this short report, I have to confess that there is actually a channel about gear that I've also found and enjoy very much. It's the channel of Christopher Frost. His calm voice and a British accent are just perfect for informative reviews of gear. Very solid tests and very objective reviews! This channel is a really nice gear related alternative to the sometimes over the top reviews by digitalrev.