Category: Birds and Mammals

Stalking Stork

 


Production date: June 2006
Playout date: 8/7/2006
Camera: Fuji Finepix
Post Production: None
Location: From Motel Petro in Torzym
Soundtrack info: Not sure of title, it was an early experiment with Audioswap when that service was still at Beta Version. Unlike some tracks I chose then, this one remained free and I didn’t have to replace it, but the credits are not showing and I don’t have them. I’ll be glad to add here if anyone knows.
Languages used: None
Animals featured: European stork, Ciconia alba

This was a nice close-up of a stork just walking the roadside near to the hotel where I stayed the night after the Copenhagen conference.

When we went to the Copenhagen conference I met the other guys at Motel Petro in Torzym on their way out and left my Chrysler in the guarded carpark there. We took Adam’s one to Denmark. Then we got back to here, Adam and Kasia went on to Katowice to set her off, but I had to go the next day to Gorzow Wielkopolski – some of the footage from then I already had placed on YT before this – and so I went my own way from there.

It was a simple ornithological piece, which I hoped would interest some people. If you click through and look at the stats on YT, though, you’ll see that there was very little interest in this piece for the first six months, which did disappoint me, but then gradually the hits started to come in, and now it is coming up to 6,000 hits, and running at a healthy rate.

Related Articles
Strangers: A Memoir of Marriage
4.5 out of 5 stars(45530010)
$17.33 (as of 25/05/2026 00:35 GMT +02:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)
The Ballad of Falling Dragons: A Novel
4.7 out of 5 stars(475321)
$41.73 (as of 25/05/2026 00:35 GMT +02:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

A Day Out at Warsaw zoo

 


Production date: 6 July 2006
Playout date: 6/7/2006
Camera: Fuji Finepix
Post Production: WMM
Location: Warsaw Zoo.
Soundtrack info: Mokotow Cocktails “Swing low, sweet chariot”

This was a lovely day for me, as for the first time I managed to get all my daughters together for a day out (first and second marriages) and we went to Warsaw zoo. This is a memento of that trip.

The singing in the background was a covert recording at a practice session of the Mokotow Cocktails, and is not as finely-honed as they would normally do for performance, but I think it sounds very nice anyway, and in some places I managed to hang some images around the words of the song.

The Mokotow Cocktails were a choir in Warsaw which existed in the mid 2000s, but disbanded after the director of the choir, David B (the male voice you can hear with mine on the track) had to leave Poland as his wife was a diplomat and sent for another country posting. (I won’t use the surname because the place they went onto is somewhere I’d call less safe than Poland). Elena and I greatly enjoyed being part of it for some months towards the end. But alas, the pleasure was not destined to continue for long.

The Let Them Theory: A Life-Changing Tool That Millions of People Can’t Sto...
4.6 out of 5 stars(46543485)
$18.35 (as of 25/05/2026 00:35 GMT +02:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)
This Inevitable Ruin: Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 7
4.8 out of 5 stars(48533879)
$21.99 (as of 25/05/2026 00:35 GMT +02:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

Scenes from the Polish Countryside

Production date: 10 June 2006
Playout date: 16/6/2006
Camera: Fuji Finepix
Post Production: Windows Movie Maker with various effects
Location: West Poland

This was on the way back from Copenhagen, I was about to go on to Gorzow Wielkopolski and meet one client there – someone who later became a firm friend and still is – and just kept on with the experimental filming and photography here and there, but it’s still small because of the tiny memory card. Looking back I really regret not getting a bigger one sooner and not starting filming sooner. Thanks to this hobby my memories of the last four years will always be crisper and newer than those of the previous time.

I would liken having film with the motion and the sound included in comparison with pure stills photography as something akin to the comparison of having a still camera and not having a camera at all. Video with sound adds more than you might think.

However, it also enables you to add your own sound, and what this may well be my first ever attempt at is adding own recorded sound (this one was a recording taken with a sony dictaphone in Church) on an “environmental” vid (that is a video taken outside where you would be going anyway – your natural environment. It’s not about environmentalism) or “travlog”. I had already added bits of mp3s not recorded by myself to films, but I think this is the first to do this. It was a nice match between the Church choir singing a song – not very technically excellently, but with a fine spirit – the Church is http://www.kosciolbozy.org – and the scenes of a girl feeding her goat which I was lucky enough to spot, and the poppies growing by the roadside and the stork footage (the latter gets repeated in its own film). There is something of Poland in the film.

The sepia effect you’ll see on this film, by the way, is a technique which I only ever used the once, although in theory it wouldn’t necessarily hurt to use again – this is in fact the holding of polarising sunglass over the camera lense. No sepia after-effect was actually used here. This could be useful in situations where there really is too much glare of the sun.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Full-Cast Edition)
4.8 out of 5 stars(48584993)
$41.34 (as of 25/05/2026 00:35 GMT +02:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)
Carl's Doomsday Scenario: Dungeon Crawler Carl, Book 2
4.7 out of 5 stars(47560571)
$18.41 (as of 25/05/2026 00:35 GMT +02:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

Foxhunting (?)

The funny thing about this is actually the comments on YouTube. The number of people who took this at face value is quite astounding. They see a film of me driving past a dog on the road, and they hear some tongue in cheek commentary about me hunting a fox in a car – a ludicrous proposition – and all common sense flies out of the window! Seriously, just click through on it to the YT environment and you’ll see a fine selection of the nutjobs we share the planet with voting down my film and getting irate with me.

The Fourth Option: A Novel
4.8 out of 5 stars(485765)
$19.68 (as of 25/05/2026 00:35 GMT +02:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)
The Mistake
4.2 out of 5 stars(42591641)
$17.96 (as of 25/05/2026 00:35 GMT +02:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)

Swallows learning to fly

Flying lesson

This was taken in a courtyard in Katowice just off the old area at ul Kopernika, where the swallows were being given their flying lesson by the parents. They go around and around screaming at each other, and when they’ve got the hang of it, then it’s off to Africa they go, and that’s all the induction they get before needing to make one of creation’s epic journeys. This is still one of my early attempts. these days I’d have enhanced the sound, and got them going round a few more times and in slow motion, but back when this was made I hadn’t even used Windows Movie Maker. No Titles, no cutting, no nothing, just the way it came off the camera, like all the ones in the “early attempts” session on Huliganov TV.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Full-Cast Edition)
4.9 out of 5 stars(495109599)
$41.34 (as of 25/05/2026 00:35 GMT +02:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Full-Cast Edition)
4.8 out of 5 stars(485119439)
$27.55 (as of 25/05/2026 00:35 GMT +02:00 - More infoProduct prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on [relevant Amazon Site(s), as applicable] at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.)