Photos vs. videos for family memories

[JoshuaR]

I'm a hobbyist, mostly focused on my family life. Ninety-nine percent of what I do is still photography, but sometimes I dabble in video, usually with my phone.

I truly love taking, editing, and printing photographs. I'm very connected to the ethos and process of photography. I find video to be a serious pain—especially the editing process—and I know very little about videography or movie-making. On the other hand, whenever I watch one of my old family videos, I'm amazed by how powerfully they bring back memories. I love hearing the voices of my wife and kids and seeing them in motion. Watching the videos makes me think that it would be worthwhile to get more serious about videography, so that I could make more family movies more easily.

If you're a family-photo kind of photographer, do you also make family videos? What's your approach to doing both? Or have you settled on just stills?

Suppose that your kid is blowing out the birthday candles. Do you make a photo, or a video? What's your thought process?

How do you keep the time required to do video editing from becoming overwhelming, if you're a hobbyist?

How are you thinking about photo vs. video when it comes to capturing family memories?

 

[Craig Gillette]

Sitting here, I would have to agree that there is a "family" power in the video/movie that isn't there with stills.

This struck a bit of a nerve, fired up some regrets. thoughts of the "boxes under the beds" or the digital equivalents, etc.

All of a sudden (over the years really) "we're" at the top of the family pyramid. Shoot some video. They don't have to be great, well edited, scripted or scored. But this isn't Hollywood, you can't go back and shoot photos or videos you didn't get the first time around. There isn't another time. On my side of the family, my brother and I are it. One cousin still has a parent-in-law. My wife's side is larger but more dispersed. Her parents are from large families and she has her parents in their 90s and likely not much longer. She still has a couple of aunts and uncles, too.

Get the pictures and videos, don't put it off because they are a bit of a bother, even if you don't get to editing or do much sharing, you can't share and pass on what you never shot. (OTOH, some of us maybe deserve a bit of a beating because things, if shot, are in those "boxes" and doing some prepping or organizing and even some sharings is worth the effort. )

 

[bastibe]

After years and years of "just" photographing the life of my kids, I am coming around to the idea that the occasional video would be interesting. So we took some videos on our phones, and they were super powerful emotionally.

It's still much easier to tell stories with photos, I feel. But videos are so incredibly powerful in terms of authenticity and impact... I do need to create more of it, even though I'm not yet good at it.

 

[David Lal]

How are you thinking about photo vs. video when it comes to capturing family memories?

Hmmm .... They are different mindsets, different skills and appeal to different sets of people. Different underlying philosophies too: to me videography is somehow 'all-encompassing' whereas still photography is highly selective. Nothing wrong with either. They are just different.

In recent months I have been developing a somewhat hybrid approach: I make videos from a series of stills. Very often going back decades in the case of family members or friends. I put a sound track on - fitting music ripped from my DVDs, sometimes me playing (guitarist), sometimes a now-deceased person's voice.

It can take hours or days to make a 5 minute 'video' but what I make is proving very popular within the family/friends circle.

 

[Models By Day]

I dont have many videos but I wish I had. Photos are also good, but become useless if you don't know who is in them. Videos at least you get their voice and image saved.

They are family videos they do not need to be perfect or no need to even edit them. even with mistakes retakes they have value.

The only issues that might arise in the future is the video might not be playable on new hardware/software. this also can apply to RAW photo files, JPGs might be better for future proofing, or DNG or TIFF

 

[georgehakim]

Both. After my daughter was born in 1990 I took a lot of videos of her up until she graduated high school. Also took a lot of videos on travels and family functions. I took a lot of photos as well. I have to admit that I get a lot of joy watching the old videos. I don’t edit much. Just cutting technically-bad clips. In the last few years, I focused on photography more than video and make photo books of family trips and special occasions.

 

[ishwanu]

If you're a family-photo kind of photographer, do you also make family videos?

Yes. Travel videos, too.

What's your approach to doing both?

More photos than videos, but there are still thousands of videos.

Suppose that your kid is blowing out the birthday candles. Do you make a photo, or a video? What's your thought process?

That stuff is long past ... but we have both in the archives.

How do you keep the time required to do video editing from becoming overwhelming, if you're a hobbyist?

Easy. I don't edit the videos! People can fast-forward.

 

[Gato Amarillo]

I'm a hobbyist, mostly focused on my family life. Ninety-nine percent of what I do is still photography, but sometimes I dabble in video, usually with my phone.

I truly love taking, editing, and printing photographs. I'm very connected to the ethos and process of photography. I find video to be a serious pain—especially the editing process—and I know very little about videography or movie-making. On the other hand, whenever I watch one of my old family videos, I'm amazed by how powerfully they bring back memories. I love hearing the voices of my wife and kids and seeing them in motion. Watching the videos makes me think that it would be worthwhile to get more serious about videography, so that I could make more family movies more easily.

I think you answered your own question.

If you're a family-photo kind of photographer, do you also make family videos? What's your approach to doing both? Or have you settled on just stills?

Suppose that your kid is blowing out the birthday candles. Do you make a photo, or a video? What's your thought process?

Honestly, in my case I leave most of that to the grandmothers, both of whom do very credible photo and video with high-end phones. I don't think they do any video editing beyond trimming the ends, then uploading short clips to social media. Just for the record, I'm talking about two women in their upper 70s or maybe past 80 years.

How do you keep the time required to do video editing from becoming overwhelming, if you're a hobbyist?

I'm relatively a beginner to video, though I've been dabbling for several years. So here's some of what helped me get going. Shooting well keeps the editing time down. Give yourself plenty to work with, but try to not bury yourself in excess material --

- KISS - Keep it simple. Video editing doesn't have to be horribly complex if you do a good job with the camera - good exposure and white balance, good audio, good framing. As with most things, editing takes a while to get the hang of it, but once you have the basics down a basic video doesn't take that long.

- Keep it short. Almost all of my videos for family are seen on social media, so I keep most of them around 30 seconds, rarely more than a minute. In editing rarely do more than tie a few short clips together, add transitions, and put in simple titles. Find a simple editor that lets you do things efficiently and quickly.

- Get good audio. You may want to buy a simple shotgun mic that can fit in your camera flash shoe. Work close.

- Get variety. Long shots and close ups. Shoot some "B roll" things you can use for filler - thinking of your kid and the candles, get a shot of the cake, shots of the decorations, overall shot of the table, that kind of things you can pick up during a lull in the action or before things really get underway. If you shoot 4K you can do some zooming in editing, then still output very nice 1080.

- Shoot extra at the beginning and end of each clip, give yourself room to trim. You may be wanting to edit to the audio, or you may want to find the place that gives the best cut to the adjacent clips. You can always trim, but you can't go back and shoot more.

- Shoot at least 10 second clips, but rarely longer than 20 seconds. The kid blowing out the candles might be an exception, when you shoot all the way through then cut out any slow parts later.

- Maybe do some short interviews -- "So, Joey, how does it feel to turn 5 years old?"

In the case of a kid's birthday party I might wind up with four or five shorts to put up on Facebook or send in messages that night after the party, then string them all together with some transitions in a single longer video to distribute a day or two later.

How are you thinking about photo vs. video when it comes to capturing family memories?

I find it very difficult to do both at the same time. If I were shooting just for family memories I would probably shoot all 4K video and extract what stills I wanted from that. I suspect that's not the answer you want to hear, and maybe your mind is more flexible than mine and you can mix both.

Gato

 

[Gato Amarillo]

I dont have many videos but I wish I had. Photos are also good, but become useless if you don't know who is in them. Videos at least you get their voice and image saved.

This reminds me of a lost part of my own history. In my family we have a suitcase full of family photos going back to the 1880s, maybe a few years earlier. But no one living knows the names or stories that go with them.

I can remember as a small child my mother and her brothers sitting around grandmother's kitchen table telling the stories and recalling the names and relationships. They knew things even down to the names of horses and dogs. And every time they had these sessions someone would say, "We need to write this down." But no one ever did, and now all of it is lost.

So I hope people reading this will do better than my family did.

Gato

 

[tbcass]

For me it's mostly stills but there's no substitute for videos of things like birthdays, holidays, concerts and plays.

--
Tom

 

[MarkInSF]

I dont have many videos but I wish I had. Photos are also good, but become useless if you don't know who is in them. Videos at least you get their voice and image saved.

This reminds me of a lost part of my own history. In my family we have a suitcase full of family photos going back to the 1880s, maybe a few years earlier. But no one living knows the names or stories that go with them.

I can remember as a small child my mother and her brothers sitting around grandmother's kitchen table telling the stories and recalling the names and relationships. They knew things even down to the names of horses and dogs. And every time they had these sessions someone would say, "We need to write this down." But no one ever did, and now all of it is lost.

So I hope people reading this will do better than my family did.

Gato

Such a familiar story, unfortunately. We sat my paternal grandparents down in the Seventies to get their photos labeled, though it was a challenge to get my grandmother to focus. She really didn't care, and what she didn't want to do she just didn't do. Still - we're so glad she and various great-aunts and uncles went through those pictures for us. It made our genealogical pursuits both easier and more fun.

I would love to have video of my parents. I remember them well, of course, but seeing them and hearing their voices would be wonderful. At least in our case there aren't descendants who would care, as I and all of my three siblings are childless. Still - we should have shot the video for our own sake. And those of you with young kids should have both video and still images. Both you and your kids (and maybe generations after them) will enjoy having them.

 

[Kapiro]

You have created a very interesting thread. All of the responses so far are fascinating.

Bastibe mentioned that s/he finds it easier to tell stories with photos. While I tend to agree, I also think that it depends on where you story-telling talent lies. With my own relatives I find that, while videos have their place and can be powerful or impactful, photos seem to evoke more conversations. But every family is different.

Strange as it may sound, I used to do more video before broadband and social media. Photos were for sharing via email and early days of social media. I had a dedicated camcorder and would record clips that I would offload to my computer for very basic editing (usually just clipping and some sound tweaking) in premier elements or iMovie, once I had at least an hour worth of video covering 3-4 months, I would burn DVDs and ship them to relatives.

Nowadays, I do very little video. For family video, I do not bother shooting raw, I clip, splice and trim quickly. Sometimes I will add a bit of music. But that's for videos that are not quickly done with the phone.

 

[tbcass]

It's still much easier to tell stories with photos, I feel.

Absolutely. Doing video is much more difficult and time consuming than still photography, especially the editing.

 

[plantdoc]

The issue is longevity. Properly printed and stored photos can last a long time. But with video, file formats and playback devices change. In 20 years, your photo albums should be fine but video could be problematic unless you keep moving them to the newest format, devices, etc. Even now movies I created for playback on Blu-ray players are a problem because people have recycled their player and gone to streaming.

Greg

 

[Bob A L]

I favor photos. Video takes time and preparation to view. And if you do see that perfect view of grandma or aunt Polly, it is gone in an instant and hard to dwell on. That coupled with the length of individual videos which is a different story altogether. My wife always kinda wanted some video and still does some with her phone. But she has no concept of time when shooting video and they may run for 1, 3, 5, minutes of which a really small portion of is neat, and a large portion is boring. I had always been taught that 15 sec. was the ideal video length, but that doesn't work for her.

But lay a photo book or a photo album out on a coffee table when family gathers and folks will usually flip through at random and always find something that they really want to dwell on and remember and in turn show it to others present. But it all is unscripted and happens at the pace of the observer. If they want to spend 30 seconds or 3 minutes on a single photo that's fine.

 

[Wayne Larmon]

It's still much easier to tell stories with photos, I feel.

Absolutely. Doing video is much more difficult and time consuming than still photography, especially the editing.

There is an unmet market here. But it probably needs some kind of technological breakthrough(s) before it is practical (like was needed for smartphones.)

In the meanwhile, I punt and shoot video from just before when the birthday cake candles are lit and keep it going for a short while after the candles are blown out. And then take another short video panning around the room. (If not a birthday, then take one or two other short videos.) This doesn't need any editing but captures some of the ambience of video.

Also, I've got shelves of family video tapes that sit undigitized.

Wayne

 

[AstigmaticOwl]

I dont have many videos but I wish I had. Photos are also good, but become useless if you don't know who is in them. Videos at least you get their voice and image saved.

This reminds me of a lost part of my own history. In my family we have a suitcase full of family photos going back to the 1880s, maybe a few years earlier. But no one living knows the names or stories that go with them.

I can remember as a small child my mother and her brothers sitting around grandmother's kitchen table telling the stories and recalling the names and relationships. They knew things even down to the names of horses and dogs. And every time they had these sessions someone would say, "We need to write this down." But no one ever did, and now all of it is lost.

So I hope people reading this will do better than my family did.

Gato

I have a professional portrait of a young woman who is probably one of my mother's 9 sisters. The only identification on the back is "Before". There is no one alive to ask for more information.

 

[Gato Amarillo]

[No message]

 

[Wayne Larmon]

I dont have many videos but I wish I had. Photos are also good, but become useless if you don't know who is in them. Videos at least you get their voice and image saved.

This reminds me of a lost part of my own history. In my family we have a suitcase full of family photos going back to the 1880s, maybe a few years earlier. But no one living knows the names or stories that go with them.

I can remember as a small child my mother and her brothers sitting around grandmother's kitchen table telling the stories and recalling the names and relationships. They knew things even down to the names of horses and dogs. And every time they had these sessions someone would say, "We need to write this down." But no one ever did, and now all of it is lost.

So I hope people reading this will do better than my family did.

Gato

I have a professional portrait of a young woman who is probably one of my mother's 9 sisters. The only identification on the back is "Before". There is no one alive to ask for more information.

I'm 50-50. For the past decade I've been working with my now 93 year old Mother to caption photos. And get her memories into Word files. And my (now deceased) Grandmother was good at captioning and keeping the family genealogy updated.

But there is an equal amount of undocumented photos that could have been captioned if I'd started when more family members were alive. My Mother and Grandmother (and me) are the only family members that documented.

Get moving! The wheels of time grind slow, but they grind exceedingly fine.

Wayne

 

[Wayne Larmon]

The issue is longevity. Properly printed and stored photos can last a long time.

Properly stored black and white photos can last a long time. Not so much with color photos. Unless you dig into archival printing processes. Hollywood archives (at least some) color negatives by separating them into R, G, and B and storing the R, G, and B components on three different B/W film negatives.

Hollywood digital productions done on SOTA production systems are in peril as the formally SOTA hardware becomes obsolete and inoperative. (Do you have any photos on Zip drives? Or on floppies? Or on really old CD-Rs?)

But with video, file formats and playback devices change. In 20 years, your photo albums should be fine but video could be problematic unless you keep moving them to the newest format, devices, etc. Even now movies I created for playback on Blu-ray players are a problem because people have recycled their player and gone to streaming.

The same thing holds for any kind of digital files, including digital stills. My plan is to train one or two younger relatives about the family digital archives and hope that they will continue the migration process. And maybe writing extensive documentation on how I processed images and where the original images (think raw and 16 bit TIFF files) are stored. I don't know if this will work but this is all I can think of.

Wayne