It’s the last day of our Video Expedition in Paris. As a photographer, I can’t resist taking a few still shots to go along with the video clips I’m collecting.
The cool thing is, you can easily add still photos into your videos, too.
In fact, you can sell the photos you take as stock… and still add them into the promotional videos you sell to clients for hundreds of dollars a pop. I love double-dipping!
If you come away from a destination missing a few important clips… or you just have some great photos you want to add into a video, here are Tom’s tips for doing it right:
- Wide angle shots work best — landscapes, cityscapes, and “establishing” shots.
- Avoid photos with people, cars, or anything else that moves. You want to make your photos look like part of the video… so moving objects that are “frozen” in time are a dead giveaway.
- Add motion in editing. When you edit the video on your computer later (and don’t worry, the programs that come pre-loaded on your computer are often pretty intuitive), you can “tilt” or “pan” over the shot, adding an up, down, or sideways motion that makes it look like a video clip.
Here’s a short, easy travel video I made from our recent trip to Peru with a few photos mixed in. Some of them are even photos I took with my phone. See if you can spot them…
I just threw this together with a few video clips I recorded on my camera and a couple photos I snapped with my Android phone to show you how it’s done. But can you see how a tourism office, a local resort, or a travel company might use something like this to market their services?
Done with a purpose, you can imagine how powerful a video like this might be for one of these companies. It allows their customers to “test drive” their vacation packages without ever getting on a plane. And that’s important because unlike other purchases, a vacation can’t be returned if you don’t like it.
The truth is, we’re all sad to leave Paris this week, but also excited to return home with our newfound ability to create travel videos we can sell… both as stock, and directly to clients. Just as Tom does.
Earn back some of that money you invested in your phone or an SLR camera by creating these short video clips and selling them for $200-$4,000 each.
[Editor’s Note: Learn more about how you can fund your travels and make an extra income with photography, travel writing, blogging, and more in our free online newsletter The Right Way to Travel. Sign up here today and we’ll send you a new report, Profit From Your Photos: A Quick-Start Guide, completely FREE.]