I‘ve not been taking many photographs lately. Much of that is because I don’t leave the house all the much so there isn’t much in the way of newness in my life apart from Roby’s endlessly changing perfection; and that’s a thing best captured in motion. I’ve been using my phone to capture loads more videos, and I watch them with some frequency. 

In the same way that phone photography lacks the quality of a film camera or even a proper digital camera, phone video has a oily insubstantial quality to it that’s hard to name. 

While I don’t think I’ll go so far as to get a super-8, as that’s about $5 / minute, I have been growing more and more curious about using my digital camera to record proper video of Roby.

I’d have to edit it then, and that’s a whole thing.

There’s audio to consider, music, narrative, delivery. And all this in addition this growing hobby of a Substack, my desire to record some of this meadering thought for audio delivery, as well as the ever present background noise that is my mind whispering:


Home movies don’t feel like hobbies. They’re far, far more than that. They might require some of the same equipment and drill as a hobby, but it’s far more like home maintenance and repair than it is novel writing or golf. You’ve just got to do it, it’s the bare minimum.

The question is in quality. Do you want something thrown together and sort of shit, or do you want something you might look back at with your children for them to say:

“huh, dad took this pretty serious, didn’t he?”