It popped up from all directions quite suddenly. Steve Garfield (a friend and video blogger) mentioned it, then Walter Sabo (Hitviews) and Joseph Jaffe (Crayon). I quickly felt somewhat archaic without a profile.

I was at a winery with my mom and sister in Napa, California. After sampling some wine, I began to wander around the vineyards. You can only take so many pictures of vineyards, but suddenly I saw this hummingbird. It was my first time using my Lumix DMC-FZ35K and I wanted to compare its speed and precision to my older Canon Rebel XL. Could the Lumix capture one of the fastest animals on Earth with focus and clarity? I couldn't believe the camera's ability to distill the wings where eyes see nothing but blur. More importantly, I couldn't believe I had taken the shot having read not one page of the manual.

I'm not much of a manual/guide reader, but one would be wise to take some time to learn about their equipment. To me it's more exciting, however, to try 100 shots and hope 5 work. That's the whole fun of digital. Sometimes quality is a function of overshooting and tossing the garbage. I'm also a big believer in finding mentors -- video creators or photographers -- and understanding how their mind works, and how they solve creative challenges. I love it when a classically trained photographer breaks rules...crops something in an unexpected way, or sends your eye on a direction it doesn't normally take. I have a lot of admiration for Bruce Grant, an amateur photographer in Philadelphia whose photos I find intriguing: http://www.flickr.com/photos/grantbw.

I started blogging in 2005 because I felt like online video was about the most interesting thing to have happened since the Internet. I've been writing about it for the past years, and I just spent the past two days finalizing editing on a book called "Beyond Viral" (Wiley). I think it's about online-video marketing but my brain is so fatigued of writing that I can't be sure. I started vlogging at the same time.

I've posted more than 1,000 videos online, and I recently found some footage I shot on my first Panasonic video camera in the late 1980s. I used to edit by connecting the camera to a VHS deck, and it would take hours and hours. Can you imagine how long it would take to edit 1,000 videos without digital? And just think of the postage to share them.

I love to see normal people react to weird situations. I studied psychology as an undergrad, and I see life as a giant experiment. How will people react if I fall down the snow-covered hill in a business suit? What if my wife is walking around with toilet paper hanging from her shoe? Will people react to a teenager walking through a library with a fart machine? I'm not sure other people ask themselves the same questions, but I think they enjoy some of the answers...at least the reactions that make the video's final cut.

Beyond the community (back and forth questions and answers) I can't believe The Answer Man and Community Kate read their e-mail and reply. I hope anyone that reads this profile will send them a note and tell them Nalts says thanks.