it was just a little wander but one that confirmed that I am happiest when catching a train or a plane, a bus or a car to someplace else ...
It was a short journey, maybe an hour and a quarter across Belgium, into French-speaking Wallonia. There I had the loveliest day, lazily catching up with Wendy and Patrice, and Momo the dog.
And their sunflowers were stunning, just stunning!
It doesn't happen too often, thank goodness, but sometimes you arrive to photograph someone and voila ...you become the subject of a Patrice van de Waller's videocial.
He explains: Videocials are the specific combination of videos and social media. In other words, the videos are made specifically with Social Media in Mind. What is involved in this?
Patrice van de Walle was the bloke who made this photographer the subject ... dammit.
I should tell you though, he brings more than 20 years of experience in television & the Internet to any project he takes on. He has managed a satellite TV channel in India and helped found a TV production company in the UK. He launched TV channels in Germany and the UK, launching several video and B2B web sites too.
Actually, he is also available to speak at conferences about his favourite topic: the many uses of video on the web and the communications revolution it will engender.
He's charming, engaged, intelligent ... so yeah, I let him film me at work. It's not me at my best. I might have felt a little bit ... filmed. My preference is a kind of invisibility ... the kind a documentary-style photographer seeks. I prefer to know about everyone else but here, Patrice captured something of me at work.
I recommend you having a good look around his website ... Web Video Impact, and then wandering on over to Videocial.
Here's the man. I may have pointed my camera his way too ...
Yesterday I spent the day, someplace else in Belgium, photographing Patrice van de Walle of Web Video Impact. His company is a European leader in Client Led Video Marketing. One of his current projects is working with companies who want to highlight the engagement their clients have with products or services.
Web Video Impact's stated objective is to place the client, as much as is possible, into the production and distribution of advertising videos. It's exciting and I loved the concept. I viewed some of his work yesterday, and was impressed.
Francesca Puccio, a much-admired interior architecture and renovation specialist and friend here in Belgium, has a beautiful sample of Web Video Impact's work up on her website.
And then ... as I worked on, with my second photoshoot of the day, Patrice filmed me at work ... just for fun. So, if all goes well (and I can deal with the sadness of not actually looking like Sandra Bullock) you may get a taste of how it is to be photographed by me ... captured by the maestro himself.
The photograph below, shows Patrice filming me, with one of the smaller more portable video cameras in his stable of cameras.
