Sights and sounds of Oslo (Norway Day 1)

Would you believe it - I finished editing another Norway video before the end of 2022 ~

This is my first overseas trip where I dedicated equal efforts to both photography and videography. It is also my first time taking lots of selfies (for my personal viewing) since I finally realised that I won't be wrinkle-free forever and it is important to have some keepsakes of my dwindling youth.

During my official first day in Norway, I got up pretty early to explore the city. I did not have a concrete plan and just wanted to stroll aimlessly to immerse myself into the city . I started my exploration from the river next to the Anker hotel and somehow ended up at Oslo S. From there, I visited the Oslo Opera House. Besides the great views from the roof, there were loads of friendly gulls wandering around and pooping all over the ledges.

There was a booth for the Hop On Hop Off bus right outside the Opera House since it is a featured stop of the bus tour. As it was starting to drizzle when I descended from the Opera House's roof, I decided to purchase a ticket (NOK 400) and give my legs a break.

I went on a full round to listen to the audio guide. It was during the tour when I found out that Norway is probably not a very popular destination for Chinese tourists since the audio guide did not have a Chinese language option. I disembarked at the Vigeland Sculpture Park as I was attracted by the park's fall colours. I spent quite some time admiring the golden leaves, mallards and of course the sculptures since I missed the next tour bus.

My next stop was the Oslo Cruise terminal as I wanted to get a souvenir (a small keychain as usual) and I walked back to the Opera House and my hotel. I ended my day early since daylight hours were shorter in autumn.

I probably spent the most efforts on taking videos on this day. In the past, I have never taken Magic Lantern videos with sound because it takes up too much memory space and may cause frame drops earlier. However, during this trip, I enabled sound recording whenever I found it important. Sadly, I did not do it all the time as some of my SD cards did not have the version with mlv sound. Also, to save luggage space, I did not bring my laptop and intended to backup my images and videos via my phone... a huge mistake which I realised during my first day. I did not know that uploading Magic Lantern videos via my phone to Google Drive/Dropbox was so slow and prone to disruption. I did a test run at home but my home's WiFi speed was miles faster than most hotels'. Henceforth, I tried to make sure that whatever videos I recorded were of value to save space on my cards.

I also tried different colour grading for this video - I think it looks much nicer. I know that my previous videos all looked quite washed out so I tweaked my editing for this. The goal now is to complete the video editing for another day in Norway... by February as I have some adorable videos of our panda cub Lele and his parents and I am thinking of editing those first.