Thursday, 5 February 2026

Filming at Home with the Family Ideas, Angles, and Making the Ordinary Interesting

Filming at Home with the Family

Ideas, Angles, and Making the Ordinary Interesting

Filming at home with the family is one of the most powerful (and most under-used) storytelling tools we have. There’s no studio hire, no perfect lighting, no rehearsed lines — just real people doing real things. And that’s exactly why it works.

Whether you’re making educational videos, sailing vlogs, music practice clips, or behind-the-scenes content, home filming lets your audience feel like they’re there with you.

The trick isn’t better cameras.
It’s better angles — both visually and creatively.

📐 1. The “Observer” Angle

Camera slightly back, slightly off-centre

Instead of filming into the action, try filming around it:

Over a shoulder
From the corner of the room
Through a doorway

This gives a fly-on-the-wall feel and works beautifully for:

Explaining homework or experiments
Music practice
Planning a sailing session
Family discussions around a table

👉 Feels natural, not staged.

🪑 2. Eye-Level = Honest

Sit the camera where a person would sit

Tripods at eye level create instant trust.
This is perfect for:

Explaining concepts to students
Talking to camera about mistakes and learning
Reflective “what went wrong / what went right” moments

If it feels like a conversation, people stay watching.

👨‍👩‍👧 3. Parallel Action

Film beside someone, not facing them

Great for:

Cooking
Building or fixing things
Setting up sailing kit
Science prep

You talk while doing, which:

Reduces self-consciousness
Keeps energy flowing
Feels far more authentic than a talking head

🎬 4. Cutaways Are Your Secret Weapon

Even at home.

Quick clips of:

Hands tying knots
Someone concentrating
A notebook filling up
A sail bag being opened
A student’s scribbled diagram

These give you:

Editing flexibility
Visual interest
A professional feel — without being “slick”

⏱️ 5. Time-Lapse the Boring Bits

Homework. Practice. Prep. Cleaning kit. Setting up experiments.

Time-lapse turns:

20 minutes → 5 seconds
Boring → oddly satisfying

And it’s brilliant for showing effort without dragging.

😄 6. Leave the Imperfections In

The best home footage often includes:

Laughter
Interruptions
A wrong answer
A “wait… that didn’t work” moment

These moments:

Build trust
Make learning relatable
Show process, not perfection

Polish later. Capture honesty first.

🏡 7. Use the House as a Storytelling Tool

Your home already tells a story:

Bookshelves = learning
Instruments = creativity
Sailing gear = adventure
Whiteboards and notebooks = thinking

You don’t need a studio backdrop — you already live in one.

Wednesday, 4 February 2026

How to Approach Learning a New Piece of Music

(Without tears, tantrums, or throwing the score across the room)

Whether you’re learning a Bach fugue, a hymn accompaniment, a jazz standard, or a modern film theme, the process matters far more than raw talent. The biggest mistake most learners make is trying to play the whole piece too soon.

Here’s a calm, methodical, actually effective way to approach a new piece of music.

1. Start Away From the Instrument

Before you touch a key, read the music.

Look for:

Key signature and likely accidentals
Time signature and rhythmic traps
Repeated motifs or sequences
Changes in texture (chords → melody → counterpoint)
Technical hazards (leaps, awkward fingering, fast runs)

👉 This is musical reconnaissance. Five minutes here can save hours later.

2. Decide What the Piece Is Doing

Ask yourself:

Where is the melody?
What is accompaniment and what is decoration?
Where does the music breathe?
Where is it going emotionally?

Music is not a typing exercise. If you know what matters, you’ll practise the right things.

3. Break It Into Small, Logical Chunks

Forget “from the beginning to the end”.

Instead:

1–2 bars for complex music
4 bars for simple passages
One hand / one voice / one line at a time

Mastery comes from precision, not endurance.

4. Practise Slowly (Slower Than Feels Sensible)

Slow practice isn’t beginner practice.
It’s professional practice.

At slow speed you can:

Hear balance and voicing
Control fingering properly
Spot tension before it becomes habit
Build reliable muscle memory

If you can’t play it slowly, you can’t really play it.

5. Use a Metronome – But Don’t Worship It

A metronome is a tool, not a dictator.

Good uses:

Checking rhythmic accuracy
Stabilising tricky passages
Gradually increasing tempo

Bad use:

Locking expressive music into mechanical rigidity

Use it, then switch it off and listen.

6. Join the Dots Carefully

Once small sections are secure:

Overlap sections (end of A into start of B)
Practise transitions deliberately
Don’t assume joins will “sort themselves out”

Most performance disasters happen between sections.

7. Build Musical Detail Early

Don’t wait until “later” for:

Dynamics
Articulation
Phrasing
Registration / tone colour

If you practise without them, you are practising the wrong version of the piece.

8. Play Through Imperfectly – On Purpose

Once the notes are mostly there:

Play the whole piece without stopping
Note where it falls apart
Fix those spots afterwards

This trains recovery skills and performance confidence.

9. Walk Away (Yes, Really)

The brain consolidates learning away from the instrument.

Short, focused sessions + rest
beats
long, frustrated marathons

Sleep is an underrated practice technique.

10. Perform It Before You Think It’s “Ready”

Play it:

For a friend
Into a recorder
In a low-pressure setting

Nothing reveals weak spots faster — and nothing accelerates progress more.

The Big Idea

Learning music isn’t about grinding through notes.
It’s about thinking, listening, and building confidence layer by layer.

Slow is fast.
Simple is powerful.
And consistency always beats talent.

Tuesday, 3 February 2026

Time Management: Working Smarter, Not Harder

We all know the feeling:
Busy all day… exhausted by the evening… and somehow the important jobs are still sitting there untouched.

The problem usually isn’t laziness.
It’s not a lack of commitment.
It’s that we’re working hard in the wrong places.

Time management isn’t about cramming more into the day. It’s about making better decisions about where your energy goes.

❌ The “Busy Trap”

Many people fall into what I call productive-looking chaos:

Answering emails all morning
Tweaking things that were already “good enough”
Jumping between tasks every 10 minutes
Doing urgent things that don’t actually matter

You feel busy — but progress is slow.

✅ Working Smarter: What Actually Helps

1️⃣ Decide what really matters today

Not everything deserves equal attention.

A simple rule:

If you only completed one thing today, what would make the biggest difference?

That’s your priority — do it first, not “when you get time”.

2️⃣ Batch similar tasks

Switching tasks burns mental energy.

Batching saves it:

Emails → once or twice a day
Filming → all in one block
Editing → separate session
Admin → grouped together

This is why production lines exist — and brains work much the same way.

3️⃣ Use systems, not willpower

Willpower runs out. Systems don’t.

Examples:

Templates instead of starting from scratch
Checklists instead of relying on memory
Reusable lesson plans, workflows, and setups
Default routines that remove decision-making

If you do something more than twice — systemise it.

4️⃣ Stop aiming for perfect

Perfection is often just procrastination in disguise.

Ask:

Is this good enough to work?
Will anyone notice the difference?
Does this need improving now — or ever?

Most things only need to be clear, accurate, and useful.

5️⃣ Rest is productive (seriously)

A tired brain makes poor decisions.

Short breaks, walks, and proper downtime:

Improve focus
Reduce mistakes
Speed things up overall

Burnout isn’t a badge of honour.

🧠 The Real Shift

Time management isn’t about squeezing more hours out of the day.
It’s about respecting your attention.

When you protect that:

Work feels lighter
Output improves
Stress drops
Progress becomes visible

That’s working smarter — not harder.

Monday, 2 February 2026

A Multispectral Way of Seeing if Bare-Rooted Trees Are Still Alive

Using infrared photography to spot life before the leaves appear

Planting bare-rooted trees always feels a bit like an act of faith.
You put what looks suspiciously like a bundle of sticks into the ground, water it, mulch it… and then wait. Sometimes for weeks. Sometimes for months.

But what if you didn’t have to wait?

🌱 The problem with bare-root trees

In winter or early spring, bare-root trees:

Have no leaves
Show no visible growth
Can look identical whether alive, dormant… or dead

Traditional checks (scratching the bark, bending twigs) are crude and localised. They tell you what’s happening in one tiny spot, not across the whole plant.

That’s where multispectral imaging comes in.

👁️ Seeing what the eye can’t: Near-Infrared

Healthy plants strongly reflect near-infrared (NIR) light because of the internal structure of their cells.
Dead or stressed plant tissue reflects much less.

Even without leaves, living cambium, buds, and internal moisture can still produce a detectable NIR signal.

Using:

A multispectral or IR-converted camera
Or an IR filter (e.g. 720 nm long-pass)

you can compare:

Visible light → looks lifeless
Infrared → quietly glowing with activity

In false-colour IR images:

Living tissue often appears bright red or pink
Dead wood stays dark or dull

🧪 Why this works (the science bit)

Infrared reflectance depends on:

Cell wall structure
Water content
Internal air spaces

Even before photosynthesis ramps up in spring, living tissue still interacts with IR light very differently to dead material.

It’s the same principle used in:

You’re just doing it… in the garden.

🌳 Practical uses

This approach can help you:

Check newly planted bare-root fruit trees
Compare multiple saplings quickly
Decide whether to wait or replace a failed tree
Monitor recovery after transplant shock

It’s non-destructive, fast, and strangely reassuring.

🔍 A quiet reminder

Just because something looks dead…
doesn’t mean nothing is happening.

Sometimes you just need the right wavelength to see it.

Sunday, 1 February 2026

Is It Time to Upgrade the Video Camera?

Canon R5C vs Canon C50, C80… or Stay Put?

We already own what many people would call a dream hybrid camera: the Canon EOS R5 C.
It’s a serious stills camera and a very capable video camera, producing beautiful 4K and 8K footage with colour science we trust and lenses we already own.

Alongside it, though, we still rely heavily on older Canon DSLRs for multi-camera teaching, lab demonstrations, and day-to-day filming. They work. They’re reliable. But they are undeniably showing their age.

So the big question becomes:

Is it time to move up to a dedicated cinema camera like the Canon C50 or C80 – or are we better off sticking with hybrids and legacy kit?

Let’s break it down properly.

What the Canon R5C Already Does Brilliantly

The R5C sits in an interesting middle ground:

Superb image quality for both video and photography
Canon colour science that matches our existing cameras well
RF mount keeps us fully inside the Canon ecosystem
Internal fan removes most overheating worries
Ideal for solo operators, small crews, and hybrid shooting days

For science teaching videos, sailing content, and blog-linked visual work, it does exactly what we ask of it.

Its weaknesses aren’t about image quality – they’re about workflow:

No built-in ND filters
Audio needs more rigging
Still very much a camera, not a video appliance

Where Older DSLRs Are Now Holding Us Back

The older DSLRs still earn their keep, but:

Limited codecs and bit depth
Weak low-light performance compared to modern sensors
Manual audio workarounds everywhere
No timecode, no pro I/O, no modern monitoring tools

They’re fine as locked-off angles, but they’re no longer ideal as primary cameras in a modern teaching studio or production workflow.

The Case for a Cinema Camera: Canon C50

The Canon EOS C50 is often described as the “first proper step” into cinema cameras – and for good reason:

What you gain

Built-in ND filters (huge quality-of-life upgrade)
Excellent autofocus for teaching and demonstrations
Proper audio inputs
Long-form recording without drama
A body designed for video first

What you lose

No stills camera capability
Slightly less flexibility for grab-and-go photography
More setup, more intention required

For education, interviews, lab work, and talking-head clarity, the C50 starts to make a lot of sense.

Looking Further Ahead: Canon C80 and Beyond

The Canon EOS C80 (and higher-end cinema bodies) push things further still:

More robust codecs
Greater dynamic range
Higher-end monitoring and connectivity
Designed for broadcast and professional environments

But this is where an important question arises:

Are we upgrading because we need it – or because we can?

For most education, online content, and sailing video work, these cameras may be overkill unless the workflow itself demands them.

The Real Question Isn’t the Camera

This isn’t really about image quality.
It’s about workflow efficiency.

A cinema camera makes sense when:

You’re filming long sessions regularly
Audio must “just work” every time
ND filters save setup time on every shoot
Reliability matters more than flexibility

A hybrid camera still wins when:

You need both video and photography
You’re moving quickly between setups
You want maximum versatility in one body

A Sensible Upgrade Path

For a setup like ours:

Keep the Canon R5C as the flagship hybrid
Retire the oldest DSLRs first, not everything at once
Introduce one cinema camera (C50 is the sweet spot)
Use it as the main teaching / studio / long-form camera
Let the R5C handle photography and high-impact video

That’s not chasing specs – that’s improving how we work.

Final Thought

The question isn’t “Is the Canon C50 or C80 better than the R5C?”
Of course they are – at video-specific jobs.

The real question is:

Which camera makes filming easier, more reliable, and more enjoyable for the work we actually do?

And sometimes, the smartest upgrade isn’t the most expensive one – it’s the one that removes friction from every shoot.