How Do Still Photographers Use Video?

Greetings, fellow photographers.

 

I've been a pro or semi-pro still photographer for nearly 20 years. In all that time, my only experience with video was shooting random clips on my iPhone (not professionally).

 

With the COVID lockdown, I made it a point to learn how to shoot video. My goal is to open up another income stream by offering to make interview-based promotional videos for businesses in my community.

 

I started learning about how to shoot video. I've spent hours on YouTube, and recently started getting into LinkedIn Learning. I subscribed to Premiere Pro, and started to just learn. I still have a long way to go, but just 4 months ago I was a guy who could not even tell you the difference between 1080 and 4K. Baby steps.

 

My question is this. For any still photographers out there who have made the successful transition to video, how did you do it? Any helpful tips for me? While I do value the creative outlet that video provides (much like photography), I'm in this to make money. If I can't make money be being a creative, then I'm sunk. So ... any advice is appreciated!

 

Thanks in advance.

I'm an experimental filmmaker, but don't make $$ with it. You need to look at areas that people will pay for the video. I do not want to shoot video or do photography of anything I hate just for $$. I only work on projects I want to do, irrespective of any profit motive.

 

Video can be separated into shooting raw video and post processing the raw video into a finished product. It is just like still work. I do lots of video work, but most of it is for my archival work. Since they don't like photos from other photogs here, that leaves out hundreds of my videos.

 

I did a fantastic film of Cotton Pickers from the dust bowl era and one of an IR flash pervert book of a Japanese photog shooting chikan on Japanese trains. But none of this can be shared here.

 

Google 'Crowded Train chikan japan vimeo' and you can see the short video on chikan. I had to mix 6 soundtracks for it of subway sounds. Sound is a big deal with video. If you don't have it, get some sound editing software.

 

Good luck, just dive into it and get going...you grasp by grasping!

Since this question seems to be about professional photography...I think it'd be crazy to fail to offer some basic edited video with every nominally still shoot, or for a client to fail to expect that. .

Since this question seems to be about professional photography...I think it'd be crazy to fail to offer some basic edited video with every nominally still shoot, or for a client to fail to expect that. .

 

Thanks.