I know I'm not the first to do this, but I have been wanting to give it a go for myself, recording some on-location sound to accompany my photographs.

I have been interested in recording natural sounds since I was young. When I was in middle school and bought one of the first MP3 players on the market, I found that it had a built-in microphone for dictation. I used this on occasion to record sounds from when I would wander the vast forest behind my parent's house. As I got older, recording became a big interest, and in college I made a business out of recording live concerts. While I have somewhat retired from that, I still have most of my gear, including some high-end mics that I've been wanting to take into the woods.

So I packed up some gear today and went back to Blood Mountain, which I had hiked this past Sunday (see the Small Format / Medium Format threads). I recorded sounds at some of the same locations to match my images and made a simple video. For those interested in the technical, I used a pair of Earthworks QTC1 mics (now sold as QTC40's) in conjunction with a Jecklin Disk for more spacious stereo sound. Wind, as expected, was an issue, but I tried to mitigate it as much as I could with basic windscreens. I just bought online some 100mph windscreens so I will try those out next time. Anyway, I recorded into a Zoom H6 recorder at 96kHz, 24-bit. These mics are really amazing because they capture from 4 to 40,000Hz, twice as high as typical good human hearing, and the fidelity from complex high-frequency sounds is obvious (such as water). I had to bring along a beefy USB powerbank for the Zoom recorder because these mics are super power-hungry and kill a set of batteries instantly.

Here's a pic of the setup:


Here's the video with 5 images from the Blood Mountain hike from the Byron Reece Trailhead to the summit via the Appalachian Trail, and back on the Freeman Trail. For you eagle-eyed viewers, you'll notice one image on 8x20 I shot in 2017 that I added since it was taken at the Byron Reece Trailhead.



Might give a go to recording some more of these at some of my favorite local hikes. What do you think? Already done to death? A good companion to photographs? Would love to hear your thoughts and feel free to share your own photographs+sounds videos or recordings.