Hillwalk Scotland

Films and Photos Wanted for Festival

The Edinburgh Mountain Film Festival is calling for amateur and professional filmmakers to enter its film competition before the deadline of June 39th. They are also looking for photo submissions. Details of the film competition here and details of the photo competition here. There are cash prizes in both cases. The Festival takes place 19-21 October 2007.

Just to give you a flavour of the Festival, here's a trailer for last years Festival on You Tube. It's called Fisherfield and it's well worth watching.

Mountains of Scotland You Tube Video

I was having a surf on You Tube and came across this video of the Mountains of Scotland. Produced by bigwallypants It's set to a Gaelic song by Runrig - An ubhal as airde (The Highest Apple). If like me you're stuck at home wishing you could get away to the hills, have a look - it'll help take you there, at least for a few minutes. Its also good fun trying to work out what the mountains are.

Using an Ice Axe - Video

There seems to be more and more video of interest to hillwalkers appearing on You Tube. The magazine Country Life now has a section. Its readers must be a fit bunch as the videos are mostly get fit advice!
There is also an excellent video demonstrating how to do an ice axe arrest. It's beeen reproduced by permission from the British Mountaineering Council's 'Winter Essentials' DVD, so it's authoritative. The code allowing people like myself to embed it in their blog is also made available. So if you think you might still get an opportunity to get out in winter conditions it's worth having a look (go on, even if you're experienced it's always worth reminding yourself of best practice).

Hillwalking Videos

More and more hillwalking videos are finding their way onto the internet and the magazine Trail now has a dedicated section on You Tube. The videos are a mixed bag of fitness training and gear guides and are produced in a very basic, tongue in cheek manner. You can view all eleven videos here. They have made the code available so that others can embed the videos on their sites. So here is a guide to the Petzel e+LITE headtorch which they are offering free with a magazine subscription.

1st HillwalkScotland.com Video

I thought I'd try my hand at producing short videos of hillwalks - my first attempt is of the walk I did last week around the Luss Horseshoe. Have a look and see what you think - I'd very much appreciate any feedback.
I was using a handheld consumer camcorder and didn't want to lug a tripod round with me. Unfortuntely landscape shots show up the slightest camera shake - I'll maybe invest in a camera monopod that also doubles as a walking pole. It was also quite difficult getting the compression right. Panning across a landscape looks great at high quality but tends to break up once compressed.
I also had to decide how to host it - putting a video file on my blog will eat up my bandwidth allowance if even a small number access it. I decided to post using Video Egg as they and Typepad operate an integrated system and I was reasonably happy with the way they compress it. I've also posted it on You Tube and created a Hillwalk Scotland channel. It's obviously the most popular video sharing network so it makes sense to have a presence there, although I felt their compression was not as effective. If anyone wants to place the video on their website, it's straightforward to copy the code and add it. All I ask is that HillwalkScotland.com gets a credit and link.

Hillwalking but not as I Know It

This video is a slightly different sort of hillwalk to the sort I go on. The top British climber Leo Houlding has just made a commercial for Berghaus that involves walking a rope (slacklining) across a massive drop in Yosemite. This shows footage of Leo making several attempts at the walk and its pretty impressive daredevil stuff.

Hillwalking on You Tube

Like many bloggers I'm interested in how the internet and technology is changing how people communicate with each other. One of the most astonishing developments of the last year is the huge growth in video sharing sites such as You Tube.

Reading today that Google is considering buying the site led me to look to see if there was any videos that would be of interest to readers of Hillwalk Scotland. Well there is - although most are very much home movies with decidedly suspect camera work and little or no editing. Of course for many that is part of the charm, otherwise the site would not be successful.

What struck me is interesting is how easy it is to share and distribute the videos. The site provides code that you can copy and paste to embed the video into other sites. So for the first time here is a short You Tube video by a contributor called Etive showing off the view from the highest point on the Skye ridge, Sgurr Alasdair.