I want to become better at videography, and the obvious way to approach that would be to start learning video: camera settings, frame rates, codecs, Log profiles, color grading, stabilization, camera movement and editing. There is certainly no shortage of technical subjects to explore.
The more I think about it, however, the more I suspect that starting there would teach me the wrong thing first. Before learning how to make better video, I need to learn how to see a story.
Modern cameras already make technically good images remarkably easy. My Canon EOS R can produce beautiful photographs and perfectly respectable video. My iPhone can record excellent footage with almost no preparation, while a GoPro can capture perspectives that would have required specialised equipment not very long ago. I therefore don’t think the technology is currently my biggest limitation. The more difficult question is much simpler: what should I point the camera at, and why?
That question is equally relevant to photography. It is quite easy to return from a trip with dozens of attractive photographs of buildings, landscapes, food and interesting objects. Each image may be perfectly good in isolation, yet the collection does not necessarily communicate what happened, what we experienced or why a particular moment mattered. A beautiful photograph records something worth seeing. A visual story has to do more: it needs to help someone understand an experience.
For now, I have reduced that problem to three simple questions.
Where are we? What are we doing? What makes this moment special?
The first question establishes the environment. A wider image gives the viewer enough context to understand where the story takes place. The second moves closer and shows the activity or interaction that gives the scene its purpose. The third searches for the detail that gives the moment its character: an expression, a gesture, a texture, steam rising from a cup, a hand adjusting a camera, or something else that might easily have gone unnoticed.
Conveniently, these three questions also correspond reasonably well with the way I already think about focal lengths. A wide-angle view can establish the context, a normal focal length can show the activity, and a telephoto or macro view can isolate the meaningful detail. It is certainly not a complete theory of visual storytelling, nor is it intended to be. Its value is precisely that it is simple enough to remember while actually taking photographs.
Imagine, for example, that my partner and I arrive somewhere with a beautiful landscape. My natural photographic instinct might be to find the strongest composition and make the best landscape photograph I can. There is nothing wrong with that, but if I want to communicate the experience of being there, the landscape itself is only the beginning. One photograph could establish the vista. Another could show Elena enjoying the view. A third might show her photographing it, perhaps followed by a detail of the resulting photograph on the back of her camera. None of those additional photographs needs to be as visually impressive as the landscape itself. Together, however, they communicate something the landscape photograph cannot: the experience of being there.
The same idea works on a much smaller scale. In a café, I might begin with an image that establishes the place, then photograph the preparation of the coffee, and finally notice the steam rising from the cup or the texture of the foam. Instead of collecting several unrelated attractive images, I am deliberately looking for images that have a relationship with one another.
This led me to a slightly unusual conclusion. Perhaps the best way for me to begin learning videography is not with video at all, but with photography.
Photography slows the problem down. I can stop and think about what establishes the scene, what activity matters and which detail completes the sequence. I do not yet have to worry about camera movement, clip duration, stabilisation, sound or editing rhythm. I can concentrate entirely on recognising the story and expressing it through a small sequence of images. My initial exercise can therefore be very simple: whenever something seems worth recording, try to tell its story in at least three photographs—introduction, activity and detail.
Once that way of seeing becomes natural, the transition to video should be much less dramatic. Instead of taking the photograph that establishes the location, I can record a short establishing clip. Instead of photographing an activity, I can allow it to unfold for several seconds. Instead of isolating a detail in a still photograph, I can give the viewer time to observe it. The medium changes, and with it many technical possibilities, but the basic storytelling structure remains remarkably similar.
Thinking about videography this way also changes how I look at my equipment. My EOS R is clearly the more capable photographic tool when I want maximum image quality, control over depth of field, different lenses or simply the deliberate experience of using a dedicated camera. That does not automatically make it the best tool for learning video. Using it for video introduces additional decisions about lenses, the 4K crop, resolution, support and eventually perhaps a larger rig. None of those questions is unreasonable, but none of them helps me recognise a story either.
For the foreseeable future, the iPhone therefore makes more sense as my primary video camera. It removes much of that friction, is always available and quick to deploy, and its different focal lengths already provide something close to the wide, normal and telephoto perspectives I use when thinking about photographic stories. The GoPro adds another useful capability: viewpoints. It can go on a bicycle, be attached to something, sit very low to the ground or capture immersive walking and driving sequences without requiring a large support system.
This means I no longer need to decide which of these cameras is somehow the best. They can simply have different roles. The Canon remains my deliberate photographic camera, particularly when image quality, lenses, portraits or the pleasure of photography itself matters. The iPhone becomes the everyday storytelling camera and, at least initially, my primary video camera. The GoPro provides movement, immersion and viewpoints that would otherwise be inconvenient or impossible. They complement one another rather than compete.
There is also a broader lesson in this that I recognise from other areas. When learning something new, it is tempting to begin with the most visible tools and techniques of the discipline. Videography appears to be about cameras, codecs, camera movement and editing because those are the things we can observe videographers using. Yet those techniques are supporting a more fundamental capability. In my case, that is the ability to recognise a story and decide what someone needs to see in order to experience it.
That is the capability I want to develop first. I want to become better at recognising the context that establishes a story, the activity that moves it forward and the detail that gives it meaning. Photography gives me a deliberately simpler environment in which to practise that skill. Once I can reliably tell a small story with three photographs, I can start replacing those photographs with moving images and gradually introduce everything else that videography makes possible.
The technology can become more sophisticated as my needs become more sophisticated. The EOS R can always return to the video workflow if it eventually provides a creative advantage that I actually understand and need. There is no reason to introduce that complexity merely because the camera is capable of it.
For now, I would much rather make a technically ordinary video that tells an engaging story than a technically beautiful video that says very little.
Perhaps learning videography does not begin with learning video after all. Perhaps it begins with learning to see.
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