In a fast-paced, impatient world of snappy sound bites and life stories told on Twitter feeds, one Victoria man has found a way to slow things down.

The videos on Doug MacCormack’s Youtube channel are several minutes long, and little happens.

They are mostly an ode to Vancouver Island, to nature and to the ocean, edited with soft, calming music.

"The vista here is my stage! At the point of Vancouver Island, looking across at the Olympics (mountains) I see as a big stage, you know. So I go down to different places, different parts of it and it depends on what I'm going for," MacCormack said.

He might follow a single wave with his camera, or track sail boats racing across the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

“Yacht races are the most gorgeous dance on that platform of all. When they've got the jibs out and the colour and they go by,” MacCormack trailed off, lost in thought.

He was inspired to seek out the most beautiful images after a career spent seeing the very worst images as a television news cameraman.

“It's all counter to doing the news. Chasing (Clifford) Olson, doing the murders, to seeing people shot, people run over with a big truck, seeing the bodies, doing all of the hard news that we had to do, it's like at the end of that game you need therapy, and sitting down there for hours, you know, whatever sort of happens I follow it,” he said.

Therapeutic, it turns out, not just for MacCormack, but also for those who watch his videos.

Together, they’ve had more than 100,000 views

Most of the viewers who contact him are people with high anxiety who find the videos soothing, allowing them to rest, even to sleep.

“I also had a letter form a group of men from Afghanistan that lost limbs, and they have a thing called phantom limb disease. when they watch my videos, because they're so slow, it can take the pain away, the guy said."

MacCormack sees it as a kind of meditation.

"Centering. Our ultimate centre is the earth, man."

MacCormack says he just wants to share what he sees, and will never have advertising on his Youtube channel.

One of his favourite videos is of sea birds, inspired by a story he did as a television cameraman half a century ago.

It was a profile about Vancouver Island artist Fenwick Lansdowne, renowned for his bird paintings.

"I went to the beach with him, looking for the birds to come in and he would draw them. But we had to sit for hours before the birds would come in, all the different kinds. It was amazing."

"So 50 years later, I put up a 20 minute video of just all sea birds diving and feeding, 20 minutes to classical music because of the influence I got in the 70's from him and his passion,” said MacCormack.

It was then that MacCormack started to realize stillness isn’t boring or exhausting, stillness can be magic.

"In the stillness things happen, the birds come to you, funny things happen, you see things, but you’ve got to hang out for awhile," he said.

"The ocean is always changing, it's always feeding you, like the Olympics and the different snow level, the clouds and then you've got all of the birds and all of the activity."

Like snowflakes, every single frame of video he catches is unique, no image ever the same.

"The ocean every day is different, every day is, like the sun's at a different level, the reflection is different, it's different, it just goes through all of these different phases," he said. 

Sharing that beauty is his passion, and all he wants is for other people see what he did through his lens.

For MacCormack, that’s all life is about, how we connect with art, beauty and moments.

"Along the way we touch people with passion."