Whenever my colleagues and I contemplate the state of the news business, I feel as though we have all just settled into our seats on a roller coaster ride.

As we slowly climb upwards, clacking along the rails, we expect our stomachs will soon be turned upside down, and we might howl in terror or in joy as we careen around unseen turns on the track.

The only thing for sure is that it will be an exhilarating ride that will prove to be worth the wait.

While we are as concerned as the next guy or gal about the future of the news business and the economy as a whole, we are for the first time breaking news the second it happens on our Web sites.

We are for the first time putting up photo slideshows with a dozen photos of cultural or political events, videotaping a political rally or the midnight grape harvest and creating with our computer mice colorful news pages that once required hot wax, razor blades and lots and lots of paper and ink.

After what seems like decades where little changed, the news-gathering business is changing rapidly.

The trick, of course, is to embrace the change.

So we’re shooting more local videos, making it easier for readers to reach us through the Virtual Newsroom on our Web site and offering paid subscriptions to our e-edition, in which we deliver .pdfs of every page of the paper to interested subscribers.

This week, we are introducing a little more change courtesy of one Seth Herbey, Napa videographer.

Herbey didn’t come into the newsroom the usual ways — with a resume or as a walk-in with a story proposal or a news photo he took that day.

Herbey simply began chronicling aspects of his life and Napa life on video, and started to place his finished pieces on the Internet.

When he shot a video capturing the city of Napa in all its grit and glory, that came to the attention of our own chronicler of the Napa life, Register reporter and columnist Kevin Courtney.

Courtney wrote about Herbey, and an idea was born.

That idea has matured and debuts Thursday on napavalleyregister.com. The first installment of Seth Herbey’s NapaCam is about a corner of the city you may not know — a place where yellow star thistle and a valley oak emerge from the middle of the pavement — and where you can see everything from Browns Valley backyards to San Pablo Bay.

Check out the NapaCam on the first of every month, or boot up whenever you feel like it and find his work featured on our Web site.