Author Archives: Maria Langer

Office Cleaning Time-Lapse

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Oh yeah. I’m really hooked.

But the good part about all this is that it’s encouraging me to keep moving.

I created this time-lapse today, while cleaning my office. Here are the before and after images; as you can see, it really needed some work.

Before

This is what I had to clean.

After.jpg

This is what it looked like when I was done.

Ready for the action? Here it is. The formula: one shot at f22.0 (which explains the blur) every 30 seconds, put together in a 10 frames per second video. The lens used is a 10.5mm fisheye. Be sure to check out my dog.

This is too much fun.

Pay the Writer (and the Pilot and the Photographer…)

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A rant worth watching.

One of my Twitter friends, @PattyHankins, retweeted a link to the video embedded here. It’s an interview with author Harlan Ellison, clipped from the upcoming documentary film, Dreams with Sharp Teeth. In it, Ellison rants against people expecting professionals to work for free and the writers who are willing to work for free.

As Patty points out, this applies to photography, too. But as a writer and a helicopter pilot who has often been asked to work for free, it really hits home for me. Too many organizations expect you to work for free, as if your association with them will pay you for your time and expertise. That’s just wrong.

Watch this video. Ellison uses some colorful language throughout, but no more colorful than I’d use if I were sufficiently riled up and not afraid to speak candidly in front of a camera.

Helicopterless

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For the next two weeks, anyway.

My helicopter is sitting in a hangar at Boeing Field in Seattle, WA, being tended to by a team of experienced Robinson helicopter mechanics. There’s nothing wrong with it — well, other than a few minor squawks. It’s in for its annual inspection.

I, on the other hand, am in Wickenburg, AZ, finishing up some work before I head northwest for the summer.

So, for a while, I’m helicopterless.

Of course, now my phone is ringing with calls from folks who want to fly. Tours of Phoenix, day trips to the Grand Canyon, photo flights west of Sedona, and even a tour around Wickenburg (if you can believe that). Sorry folks. No can do. Helicopter is out-of-town and I’ll be joining it shortly.

We flew it up last week. I took Alaska Air back to Phoenix. Next weekend, I’ll hook up my travel trailer to my husband’s pickup truck and drive up to Quincy, WA. Although I might spend a few days in the campground on Crescent Bar, it’s more likely that I’ll simply return to the Quincy Golf Course and set up camp in one of its five full-hookup sites. The manager there is looking forward to my return — isn’t that nice?. He was pleased to tell me that they fixed last year’s Internet problems and now have WiFi on site. Sometime the second week in June, I’ll hop a flight on Horizon from Wenatchee to Seattle, hitch a ride to Boeing Field, and climb aboard my helicopter for the flight across the Cascades and back to Quincy.

I might even take one of my Twitter friends along for the ride.

But until then, I feel strangely grounded in Wickenburg, with nothing to fly.

It’s odd. I hardly flew at all in March and April, yet I didn’t miss the helicopter. After all, it was nearby, in its hangar. I flew quite a bit in May, covering it with dead bugs on that last flight into BFI. Now, with May drawing to a close and the helicopter 1000+ miles away, I miss it.

I’m already looking forward to that flight in June.

And hoping for a rainy cherry season in central Washington, so I get plenty of time to fly.

Sunset / Moonset Time-Lapse

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Oh, I’ve got it bad.

I really feel almost addicted to making these movies. I know they’re not really any good, but I think they’re interesting (at least). And they’re helping me to understand how to create time-lapse movies, what works, and what doesn’t work.

Yesterday afternoon, I set up my camera and time-lapse equipment on the upstairs patio of my house, pointing at the sunset. Then I let it go, shooting one image every 20 seconds. It was nearly 11 PM when I turned it off. By that time, the crescent moon had set, too.

The resulting video included a lot of blank sky. My exposure was not lengthy enough to capture the stars after sunset, although one very bright star does set with the moon when it finally makes its appearance. I cut the video into two pieces: sunset and moonset. Here they are.

Sunset Time-Lapse

It was a pretty good afternoon for shooting the sunset. In Arizona, we don’t get clouds very often — although this year, our annual monsoon may be starting early. Yesterday afternoon, there were a lot of clouds out to the west — enough to completely filter the sun and give it something to paint with color as it set.

I should mention here that this is the same sky you can see in the time-lapse I did earlier in the day of the saguaro flowers. I just moved the camera upstairs and excluded anything other that the sky (and a tiny bit of a distant tree — darn it!). The only thing I wish is that I’d begun the time-lapse before the sun entered the camera’s frame. I think it would have been more interesting to see it drift in and then set.

I also need to point out that this video (and the one with the cactus flowers) really illustrates what I find attractive about time-lapse photography. It isn’t showing us anything we can’t see on our own. But it’s speeding up the process, making it possible to see motion where we normally wouldn’t. For example, this video is 20 seconds long. I created it using images spaced 20 seconds apart, then put them together in a 15 frames per second video. Do the math: 15 x 20 x 20 = 6000 seconds of real time. That’s 100 minutes. Would you sit still for 1 hour and 40 minutes to watch a sunset? And, if you did, would you see the clouds and sun moving as they clearly are in the video?

Moonset Time-Lapse

I cut out all the boring black night sky to produce this short video of the setting crescent moon. Not terribly exciting, I’m afraid.

One of the things I learned here is to set the exposure manually so all shots are the same. Let’s face it — the brightness of the image shouldn’t change. One exposure should do the trick. If I’d made a longer exposure, I would have had a brighter moon and more stars. And if I’d fixed the exposure to be the same for every shot, the brightness of the moon wouldn’t change from one shot to the next. (I sure hope some more knowledgeable photographers out there will correct me if I’m wrong on this.)

What Do You Think?

I’d love to get your feedback about my time-lapse mania. Are you enjoying them as much as I am? Am I wasting my time? Do you have any specific topics you’d like to see in time-lapse? Use the Comments link for this post or any of the other time-lapse posts to let me know.

Saguaro Flowers / Clouds Time-Lapse

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The clouds steal the show.

I’m really liking this high-quality time-lapse movie creation. It’s fun. Best of all, I can set it up to do a job while I’m home and check the results later.

Today’s experiment came out better than expected. The main goal was to create a time-lapse movie of today’s saguaro flowers closing. (The flowers of the saguaro cactus bloom at night and are wilted and closed by late afternoon.) But I set up the camera to include the sky beyond, which was just filling with clouds. The building clouds stole the show.

If you think this looks good, you should see it in full quality at 1936 x 1296 pixels. That’s the lowest resolution my Nikon D80 can deliver, so that’s how I bring it into QuickTime.

I shut it down when I did for a few reasons:

  • The camera’s battery was almost depleted. It had snapped 621 images 20 seconds apart.
  • The wind was kicking up. I worried that a gust could knock over the camera and tripod and damage my camera on the concrete surface of my back patio.
  • The sun had moved above and behind the cactus. That wasn’t the best lighting for the flowers.
  • The flowers were just about fully closed.

I’m recharging the battery now. If the clouds dissipate a bit, I may relocate the camera to my upstairs patio and attempt a sunset time-lapse.

If you’re new to this blog or have stumbled onto this page and wonder what the heck this is all about, read “Time-Lapse Mania” to learn more.