How to Document Your Trip

with Johnny & Iz Harris


1 hour, 31 minutes
25 videos

Learn how to shoot, upload, edit, and share beautiful photos and videos from your travels.

About This Course

Seasoned travel filmmakers, Johnny and Iz, walk you through their approach to documenting travels including: their gear, storytelling techniques, filming tips, editing tutorials, and the philosophy for best capturing your trips. This course is for anyone who wants to better document their travels - NO camera experience or professional gear required. At the end of this course, you’ll be able to create your very own travel video and a set of edited photos that you can upload on the web or print into a book!

What You'll Learn

  • How to think of your trip as a story and what ingredients you need to capture that story

  • Gear available to enhance your travel documentation

  • How to extract, upload, and organize your trip footage

  • How to edit videos and photos (or how to use editing services that will do it for you)

  • How to be intentional about the way you shoot to decrease camera time and spend time enjoying the place you visit

Watch Some Samples

We've pulled out a few clips to give you a better idea of what to expect in the course

Course Breakdown

Chapter 1

Why Document a Trip?

What You'll Learn

The main aim of this course is to allow you to capture the key moments of your travels while also enjoying your experience with your own eyes, and Johnny plans to share several methods to help you do this.

It's about Joy!

Johnny Harris shares his motivations for documenting his travels and suggests how you can find your own.

Chapter 2

Gear

Overview

In this lesson, Johnny gives a brief overview of gear and the basic equipment needs for documenting a trip.

Guide to Gear Part 1: Stabilization

You can use many accessories to enhance your phone footage, and in this lesson, Johnny offers the pros and cons of different stabilization methods.

Guide to Gear Part 2: Cameras

Although you only need a phone to document your travels, Johnny Harris shares the value of having a dedicated camera. He details how to find the right camera for you and what to look for as you upgrade.

Camera Apps

Johnny talks through camera apps you can use for capturing and editing photos and videos.

Chapter 3

Documenting Your Trip

Heading Out

Johnny prepares to head to Stockholm on his trip and shares the two pieces of gear he’ll use to capture his experiences.

Your Trip is a Journey

Your journey is a story, and Johnny explains why it’s important to think about it in this way so that you can capture your journey without missing key shots.

Beware of Trigger Happiness

It’s very easy to get trigger happy as soon as you arrive in a new place, so Johnny shares his top tips on combatting this on the first day of your trip.

Our Goal Today

In this lesson, Iz Harris joins Johnny as they share their main goals of intentionally documenting their time in Stockholm.

How to Capture a Place with Video

Learn Johnny’s top tips on capturing a place with video. Johnny walks through his process of choosing his shots, assessing how many he’ll take, and other tips as he’s deciding what to capture.

How to Capture a Place in Photos

Learn Iz Harris’ guidelines to capture a collection of photos that encapsulate your trip.

Capturing Local Character

In this lesson, Iz shares what local character is, why it's important to capture local character, and how you can capture it throughout your trip.

Using Action to Move your Video Forward

Transitional footage is important to link your journey between two experiences. Johnny shares some guidelines on capturing shots that will help move your video forward.

Chapter 4

Organizing Files and Editing Services

Organizing Your Files

Johnny Harris shares his tips for organizing your footage once you’re back from your trip so that it’s easy to find your content in the future.

Have Someone Else Edit Your Video/Photo

If you don’t want to edit your own photos or videos, Johnny shares some services that can do it for you.

Chapter 5

Editing Photos

Sorting and Culling

Learn Johnny’s process on how to sort through your photos and keep the very best ones.

Enhancing

Johnny Harris teaches some basic editing tricks to enhance your photos.

Outputting

Once you’ve finished editing your photos, it’s time to figure out how you want to store them — digitally or in a photo book. Johnny discusses the two options to help you find the best one to suit you.

Chapter 6

Editing Video

Editing Software

Editing software varies in complexity and Johnny discusses the options available to you, no matter if you use mac or windows computers.

Editing Concepts

Using iMovie and Premiere Pro, Johnny shares alternative editing workflows, so you can figure out which one works best for you.

Refining Your Edit

Johnny takes a second pass at his edit and shares how you can refine your edit for length and story.

Music and Titles

In this lesson, learn how to find and incorporate music and text into your video.

Sharing Your Video

The final step is to output your video so that you can relive your memories. Johnny gives some advice on what settings to choose as you’re exporting.

Chapter 7

Recap

Recap

Johnny wraps up the course and offers some of the key takeaways on how to document your trip.

Meet Your Instructors

Johnny & Iz Harris

Johnny & Iz Harris

Johnny & Iz are a husband and wife duo of travel journalists. Together, they travel the world, documenting, telling stories, and sharing them with their audiences. They also work as producers and hosts for Vox Media. Johnny has produced 5 seasons of his show Borders - a deep dive into and human perspective of the many Borders around the globe. Iz has produced two seasons of her series, Travel, Eat, Repeat where she takes on a location, showing it through the lens of the local cuisine. Now, as co-founders of Bright Trip, their mission is to take what they’ve learned and loved in traveling the world, and share that with others - creating a community of enlightened and curious travelers.

Johnny & Iz Harris

How to Document Your Trip

with Johnny & Iz Harris