If I could go back and tell myself one thing about vlogging

This isn’t a how-to help guide for getting started vlogging.

I could give you some tips and tricks, tell you I love using CapCut, that I upload ALL my videos and then take out what doesn’t fit the story, that there’s no right answer for finding music but that I’ve been using Artlist.io (and you can enjoy 2 free months if you use that link…but this isn’t about any of that).

None of this will help you take quality videos.

And that’s kind of the first step of this whole process. If you can’t take good videos, you won’t be able to do much with it on the back end of things.

I don’t consider myself a professional by any means… but I’m actively working on my 7th vlog and if there’s one big long resounding message I could send myself from the future back to day one me, it’d be “SLOWWWWWWW DOWWWWWWWN.”

Gosh, it’s driving me so crazy. Even the moments where I think I’m being still, going slow, taking the moment in — I go back and look at a perfect shot and it’s .2 seconds long, the camera jostles like crazy at the end as I’m rushing to turn it off, or I’m ‘slow panning’ at rapid speeds.

I know why I do it, often embarrassed to be seen filming, not wanting to be in the way, not wanting to draw attention to myself, and not wanting to look like a tourist. I can also say with genuine certainty that filming on my phone has caused some of these snafus. Often lagging to start recording after I push the button and lacking any real stabilization. I also am operating on an old iphone, so sometimes it overheats, freezes, the screen goes black and I can’t see if it’s even recording. A minor inconvenience really.

These things can leave everything feeling very choppy and me needing some Dramamine. Probably not the best thing for the viewers, so I try to eliminate any dizzying content. Plus no one wants to cut their favorite parts out of their vlog because they discovered one of the most exciting moments wasn’t properly captured.

I envy the creators that make it look effortless, when I know that it’s not. How I can be watching someone’s vlog of them filming themselves out in public with — gasp — strangers around and how they are not rushing to get the shot, they are in the moment taking their space and time to capture exactly what they want to convey. And honestly, this makes the whole video feel that much more legit. This is someone who gives the impression that they know what they’re doing and I can take all the pointers to relay the same.

Looking back at footage I’ve taken, some things can be fixed with a little slowing down of my speed on the back end during editing, but some clips are still too far gone to save. Major YIKES.

So If I could tell myself one thing, it’d be to SLOW DOWN. You can’t get the moments back, once they pass, what you’ve filmed is what you get. At least in the uncurated, unscripted world.

And I think we could actually apply this theory to much of life. The slowing down, being intentional, pausing before moving, giving yourself the space of an extra few seconds.

In the future I’m hoping to get a small gimbal to help me maintain a better stabilization and consistent timing on my panning from one view to another. But if I can break those old habits and take a breath before I hit record, I think it’s going to make a world of difference in my footage.

I hope this helps you with your own film or vlogging journey. Remember, we all need to start somewhere and you can’t get better without working at it. So give yourself a chance to be bad at it and learn some new lessons.

Please feel free to leave any of your own tips in the comments, I’d love to hear them!