Europe a la Carte Blog

Welcome to my blog, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

© jonrawlinson

Lonely Planet TV is offering $500 for your best travel video. You upload your travel video and if anything catches the Lonely Planet teams eye they’ll contact the maker to offer the maker a $500 deal to license their travel video for use by Lonely Planet and their partners. It’s hard to gauge what type of travel video is likely to be selected for licensing. Lonely Planet claim that some of the best video footage is spontaneous but I don’t know if they’ll be impressed by you and your mates partying round a pool in some exotic location.

It’s a cheap way for Lonely Planet TV to increase the number of travel videos on their channel and it doesn’t sound like they guarantee licensing any travel videos. Still if you have some interesting travel videos it’s worth a try as if your video is chosen it’ll certainly be seen by a large audience.

I haven’t really got into the habit of taking travel videos even although I have a lovely little Flip video camera which I carry around all the time in my handbag. I shake too much when I taking footage and it’s more of fiddle downloading the videos to the computer than downloading photos from my digital camera.

Will you be uploading your travel videos to Lonely Planet?

A new travel video site, Tripfilms.com is offering you the opportunity to be awarded a $500 travel stipend, free accommodation and $25 for each video you upload in their TripVlogger scheme. There’s also the possibility to progress to being a Tripfilms Pro Filmmaker.

Sounds very tempting but I reckon that you’ll have to show quite a bit of potential in the videos that you initially upload before you’ll be considered as a TripVlogger.  I’d also check the small print to check when the expenses are paid.

I noticed that when I watched videos on the site that relevant travel deals ads appear at the bottom of the video, so obviously Tripfilms want great videos which will be watched by many would be travellers who will be interested in booking the travel deals. Film makers can earn a $25 Amazon or iTunes voucher for 1,000 views of their video up to a maximum of five vouchers.

I finally got around to uploading a couple of videos I took last month in one of my favourite areas in Scotland, East Lothian, which lies to the east of Edinburgh.

The first video is taken from the promenade in Port Seton, a small coastal village, which has great views across the Forth estuary towards the county of Fife and the Lomond Hills. You can also see North Berwick Law to the east. You can catch a bus from the centre of Edinburgh out to Port Seton which only costs £2.20 return.

The second video was taken at sunset from the sea front at North Berwick. I really like North Berwick, there’s a beautiful beach, a golf course and selection of cafes and restaurants. It’s a good vantage point for views of the Bass Rock, a popular sea bird sanctuary and Berwick Law, the hill behind the town. You can reach North Berwick by rail from Edinburgh in around 40 minutes.

I’ve a long way to go to perfect my video technique. I think I move too quickly and shake too much. However I wanted to show you that Scotland isn’t always grey and wet.