The Fox River Trail, Late Winter Look of 2009

A quick note ... be sure to go to the bottom of this page and click the play button on the HD version of this weeks PHOSARI episode.  Then hit pause.  Then the video will be loading while you read this posting. Also, just a reminder that you can click on a photo to view the full page version and it will open in a new tab or window without taking you off of this page.    Enjoy!

And to those who have YouTube accounts, hey, could you go to my video at YouTube and rate my video ... preferably with the full 5 star rating.  That will really help me get more views, and get on the daily HD upload page (only rated videos are shown).   Thank you very much!

The Fox River Trail (known in the Native American days as the "Fox River Corridor"), first officially opened on May 21, 2001. The trail is mostly snow covered, but as can be seen in some of these photos, and in the video, that it is in use.  The footprints left in the snow leave one assured of that.

With a good pair of Hiking Boots, a beautiful Sunset like this, and preferably a little warmer temperatures, it is still a very nice little hike.  Even in this weather, it is quite "invigorating".

With temperatures around 10-15 degrees, this shoot was a cold one.  Good thing I use a tripod.

The current conditions of the trail are mostly snow covered with a few open patches.  While the conditions would make me not recommend it for Biking (to much snow) or Cross Country Skiing (not enough snow), it is however passable by foot as the snow is not that deep overall.

With the portion of the Trail in Green Bay lined with interesting artistic creations from a variety of artists, I always seem to find interesting subject matter for the lens ... given good light.

I will be focusing on the Fox River Trail more this year.  It is widely used and quite popular with local residents.

This year a portion of the Trail will closed for a time due to the Highway 172 Construction Projects under currently under way. The trail under the Highway 172 bridge in the Village of Allouez will be closed February 18-25 due to overhead work on the bridge. There will be no marked access through this area and no marked detour. I will follow the construction, and post the conditions and closures as they are announced and as they happen of any of the sections of the trail here on Marcel Kuemmet Photography and at Green Bay Confidential.

In the video, there are some encoding errors in a few of the transitions.  As this happens in the post processing of the video (which takes several hours) there was little I could do in order to fix or repair those spots without taking in another day of editing and rendering.  I do believe however that I have figured out the cause and will attempt to correct it on the next issue of Phosari.

For those of you who are wondering (and I have been asked a few times), Phosari is sort of a play on the words Photo Safari.  I thought it was actually a pretty good way of describing my non-documentary style ... just for fun ... video shorts.  I want to feature more photography orientated postings with other photographers and document the expedition with HD video. Then I will post the photos I took on this site, as I have done here. I still feel that this blog is the best way for me to show my work.  With now having the ability to shoot High Definition Video, I will of course be concentrating on that aspect of my blogging, but I must not forget to always get some nice still photography of the subject matter that I am focusing on for a given posting.

I would like to address some issues with the YouTube based High Definition videos of mine that I am now including in my postings. 

For those who have older computers, less capable video cards, or a slow connection, I will always try to offer a low or standard resolution version of the video on the page ... usually on the right side of the page just above the High Definition version. I will have the HD version at full screen width size at the bottom of the posting. 

In the future, I will begin to use Vimeo instead of Youtube as the quality of the video (They put out a higher bit rate, I.E., better quality).  I have to wait however until I can afford a pro account.  Free account users can post their HD videos to the site, and watch them in HD on the Vimeo site, but not embed HD into Webpage's and blogs without a pro account.  Unfortunately, I just cannot seem to squeeze the $56 they charge for a years use of a pro account.  I also personally like the "Look" of their embedded player much more than that of YouTube. Vimeo also offers customization of the player with a pro account, but I have yet to see the extent of the customization they offer.

With the new implementing of H.264 HD within Flash player 10, HD is now possible within a flash player application.  It is, however, quite processor intensive and even some of the newest systems may struggle with the intense bandwidth of the HD flash compression encoding.  That is why I always offer the option to download the video of a specific post in a variety of formats and sizes.

One will find that even full 720p Windows Media High Definition video, when downloaded, will play very nicely and smoothly on even some older PC's. For Mac users, I will offer the option to download the full size High Definition H.264 Quicktime format version of the video as well as a standard definition 480p "Desktop" size version of the video for those who are using older Mac's that may struggle with the High Definition files.

I hope that all of the efforts that I put into making available by content (for free) to my viewers are and will be appreciated.

  

When and if anyone has any suggestions and or comments on anything to do with the videos, photography, text, content, and or layout of my blog (s), please feel free to use the comment feature here on blogger.  I do moderate all of my comments, and will publish the ones that are relevant to the general theme of the posting. I am especially looking forward to hearing form other photographers, artists, and video and film makers.

I have included a standard definition flash video to the right for those who have older computers, less capable video cards, a slow connection or live in the United States (the USA has a horrible Internet infrastructure ... it's all about offering the least for the most money to maximize corporate profits in the USA).

For the rest of the world, beautiful High Definition below ... Enjoy!

If you would like to download the full 720p High Definition Windows Media Video (227MB) click here.

If you would like to download the 480p standard definition Quicktime Movie (60MB) click here.