Snapshots originally intended for a video featuring products from my “Midweek Beauty Haul” post!
After reading the recent NY Mag feature on YouTube stars, watching Zoella, and blogging about a recent beauty haul from Sephora, it occurred to me to start doing video posts—mostly makeup tutorials, as I do love skincare and makeup. Heck, I make my living in beauty!
Without too much rumination, I immediately purchased a tripod and an extra SD card, only to realize as the days went by—Amazon package still unopened—that this prospect poses a challenge, for the following reasons:
1) Videos are time-consuming.
Between work (full-time), yoga (I’m a year-plus into completing my 500-hour teacher training), and everyday NYC living, I barely have time to put away laundry and tidy up around the apartment, let alone, plan, record, edit, and post homemade vids. Yes, we make time for the things we want to do… But I’m not sure if the time investment makes sense for me at this point.
2) I know zilch about iMovie.
Back to the time commitment, while I wouldn’t mind learning the editing software, it would take a full-fledged tutorial and LOTS of practice for me to get the hang of it. I thought iMovie would be user-friendly and intuitive (because I saw my niece edit clips in her teens); but it’s not.
3) Selfies still make me cringe.
I guess the median age range for selfies is 23–25. Back when Friendster and MySpace were around, I took selfies all the time. Now that I’m older and the twenty-somethings are Snapchatting—with Facebook and Instagram bridging the great (age) divide—I’m still in the process of understanding and warming up to these pics. Like I’ve mentioned in this post, I find it baffling that a recent selfie got more likes than my noodle recipe!
4) My eyebags are huge.
Dark circles are easy to conceal, but no amount of makeup can cover puffy undereye circles. Believe me, I’ve tried. I’m wearing tons of concealer in the photos above, and yet, you can still see them.
5) I want good lighting. So you’ll see a lot of me in the bathroom.
I know, I know… These vlogs are supposed to look not super-polished. But I can’t help it: I clocked in years of magazine shoots to have cultivated some kind of OCD and neurosis, as in, if it can’t be done right, then I’d rather not do it (or I should spend more time doing it). Our bathroom has the lighting closest to what I have in mind.
All the above said, I haven’t totally given up on the prospect of video blogging, but for now, I’m choosing to focus on writing posts more regularly. Who knows, in the future, I’ll be able to carve out some time and get the cameras rolling.