Pictures on the Radio
Happy New Year.
I hope that 2026 has started well for you. Mine began with a lovely walk in Suffolk, culminating in this beautiful sunset.
Sunset across the fields
Audio podcasts
There was a joke amongst those of us who worked in audio that ‘the pictures were better on the radio’. Transport the audience with sound and this intimate medium, which captures just the voice, will paint the pictures in the minds of the listeners.
A case in point - I travelled home last night listening to the 75th anniversary episode of the Archers. This long running radio soap has always been billed as ‘an everyday story of country folk’. There’s an entire community, 4 generations of ‘country folk’ who exist only in the minds of the listeners but we all know what the Bull (the pub) or the lambing sheds look like in our ‘minds eye’.
Podcasts began as audio though as Fiona Sturges put it in this Guardian article last Saturday :
“The big news in podcasting from the last 18 months has been the medium’s swift and unstoppable pivot to video.”
It’s worth reading - an interesting discussion which for me helps to reiterate that these two mediums are and always have been very different. It’s perhaps not surprising that I particularly liked this quote from audio documentary maker Eleanor McDowall:
“The absence of images from radio and podcasting isn’t some failure of technology. These audio mediums have grown from a deep love of sound and its imaginative possibilities. When I hear people say the future of audio is essentially television, it makes me feel they never knew what was exciting about sound in the first place.”
So why am I sharing this now? Well I recently bought a gimble. No I didn’t know what it was either but this small device to which you attach your phone, keeps the phone camera steady and level when you are filming. I have also got a couple of blue tooth mics which too can be used with the phone.
A couple of days ago I took out a weeks free trial of Premier Pro, the video equivalent of the Adobe audition audio editing programme that I have been using since I began the podcast. I have tried using other free to use versions of audio and now video editing apps but the reality for me is that they are much more basic and therefore harder to use with poorer results. I have now had my first lesson in video editing - thanks to having a very patient son who edits as part of his job in television.
Video podcasting?
No - I am absolutely NOT attempting to recast Our Plant Stories as a video podcast, I truly believe in sound pictures but as Eleanor says in the Guardian article:
“in the hyper-visual landscape of social media, it’s always been a struggle to share audio eye-catchingly”.
She’s right and I am wondering whether there is a way of adding some short video clips just to help promote episodes. You’ll be able to judge my first attempt in a few days time in trailers for the new series. It won’t take away from the audio, which is always my first priority and as you’ll see the video at this stage is only really possible if a friend is prepared to come and help. Thanks to Charlotte!
Coffee
As we head into 2026, I’m ending this blog post on an ask. The podcast is free to all and any who care to listen. If you are enjoying Our Plant Stories, I wonder if you would consider supporting it through the buy me a coffee app linked here. A £5 donation (or coffee!) helps to pay for the editing programmes and the hosting platform. Or you can join ‘Plant Plugs’ by committing to a £4 monthly coffee.
In The Times, Ann Treneman in the article ‘Our expert’s pick of the gardening podcasts’, described Our Plant Stories as ‘a labour of love for Sally Flatman’. She is spot on - it is. But that doesn’t mean I don’t welcome any support from listeners towards the mechanics that make it happen. At the moment I am not sure whether I should extend the free trial for video editing, it means learning another system and medium but it would be amazing to know I could give it another month - it’s 6 coffees to do that. It’s 5 coffees each month to get the podcast onto all the various platforms like Spotify or Apple, 6 coffees for my current audio editing platform.
So if this new year you can be a part of what I affectionately call ‘the coffee crew’ thank you but either way I really hope you will continue to share my ‘deep love of sound’.