A short video of Marvel hiking around Atlanta’s Sweetwater Creek State Park covering the red and white trails, including the ruins of the old mill.

After our adventure in the Ellicott Rock Wilderness Area I wanted to do more of that, but better. Filming Marvel on my cellphone and throwing a quick video together using Google Photos was fine but surely I could do better.

After much humming and hawing and not being able to decide if it was stupid or not I dropped more money than I could justify on a DJI Pocket 2 camera.

The biggest problem with filming Marvel while walking is the jerkiness. From the completely unpredictable surface of a back country hiking trail to Marvel randomly running off in a direction to sniff a tree or chase a squirrel there was no way my cell phone footage could be smooth. I had considered purchasing a GoPro camera because I’d heard wonderful things about its stabilization features. I had also considered buying a gimbal for my phone so that the stabilization could be done in hardware.

Instead I settled on the Pocket. It’s definitely a weird looking device but I liked the idea of a hardware gimbal and since DJI are kind of weird about Android devices such as my phone, I couldn’t be sure their gimbals would work with my phone.

So anyway the camera arrived and I couldn’t wait to go out and play with it. Only I’m an adult with a job and adult responsibilities. The week it arrived I couldn’t even go on a hike on my days off as these were tied up in Zoom interviews where I failed to get my dream job. However on that second day my interview ended at 11am. While I couldn’t then drive three hours out into the wilderness and hike for eight hours I could drive 45 minutes across town to Sweetwater Creek State Park.

It’s a pretty park and well worth the $5 parking fee that Georgia State Parks uses to cover their costs. It was a good reminder of why I take Marvel out to the middle of nowhere though. She’s reactive. That’s a code word for nutjob. We got her from a shelter and we don’t know what her life was like before we got her but we’ve found we cannot have her around other dogs very easily. A good example of this is at 5:14 into the video where even though I’m prepared for it she still almost manages to pull me over trying to get to the two dogs just out enjoying the day.

With a more powerful camera that I didn’t know how to use I figured I should also get some more powerful video editing software that I also don’t know how to use. At the recommendation of the videoediting subreddit I installed DaVinci Resolve and quickly realized I’m in over my head. Yay learning!

Were the results of getting a better camera and more powerful software better than my previous video thrown together with no planning? Absolutely not. But I could definitely see the potential to do much better.

Link to map of hike.