Samantha Ettus of MomPulse

Samantha Ettus of MomPulse. Photo copyright 2013 Donna Schwartz Mills

I kicked off the month by attending another conference on May 1.

No, not Mom 2.0, even though its Laguna Beach location this year made it a bit more affordable. Alas, I am still not in the position to have a budget to attend a blog conference. Fortunately, the Women in Video workshop (sponsored by MomPulse and Sony) was free to attend — and it was held in the same gorgeous hotel that all my friends enjoyed last weekend for Mom 2.0.

Sony already gifted me a couple of years ago with a fabulous Handycam, which had become such a large part of my work process that I went into mourning back in December when I lost it. I spent six weeks looking through every cluttered pile, box, bag, cabinet and closet in my house (plus the few hiding places in my car) before I finally ‘fessed up to my husband that I had, indeed, lost a device that retails for over $500.

I have always been absentminded, and I seem to get worse every year. This trait drives my husband crazy.

I don’t like it much, either. I waste a good deal of time hunting down items like my car keys and cell phone (and don’t get me started on things like iPod cables, sweaters and the like).

Anyway, I knew that telling him the camcorder was gone would result in a big, bad rant about how terrible I am with anything of value. And the sad thing is that I agree with that assessment.

So I soldiered on for the first part of 2013 without my beloved Sony camcorder. I attended a Food and Wine festival and attempted to take video with my iPad. That was kind of a bust: the quality was nothing to write home about and I didn’t capture enough of the right moments to even glean out any good tidbits to write about. I reverted back to trying to take fast notes at events, which works – but I end up missing a lot, especially when I have to switch from note taking to photography. The Handycam is rather elegant, because it has a button that allows you to take a still photo even while you are recording video. It has other features I love too — so even though I toyed with the idea of buying a less fancy model, I had my heart set on replacing the camcorder I lost with one that had all the same features. And those all cost way more than I was willing to spend.

Eventually, my husband located an exact duplicate of the Sony I had lost: it was a demo model at the Burbank Fry’s, and as it’s been discontinued, it was probably the last one for sale in Los Angeles County. It was a little bit beat up, but probably no different from my old one, which got jostled a lot in my handbag.

So I was well-armed and ready to shoot at the Women in Video event on May 1. And I walked away from the workshop inspired to do more with video.

I also walked away with another gift from Sony: A nice, new copy of Vegas Movie Studio — which is finally giving me the tools I need to do a decent job of editing my video clips.

And I’ve been kind of obsessed with learning how to use the software.

A couple of weeks ago, my sister and I launched a new video series for our InQuestOf lifestyle website, based on a new book called the Fast Metabolism Diet. Since then, I’ve learned that the publishers of the book engaged several bloggers I know to try the program out and write about it. I am not a part of that program: My sister learned about the book independently and thought it was something that would help me… as you can see from the first video in the series:

See the rest of this video series at InQuestOf Videos on YouTube.

DISCLOSURE: Not a sponsored post. Products mentioned were paid for by the author, except where indicated in the text of the post.

 

Enhanced by Zemanta