Manitoba Christmas Time Lapses

A little behind schedule here, but hopefully worth the wait, we shot a number of time lapses in Winnipeg and Pinawa around the Christmas season last year. Although the clip itself has been online for awhile now, I've finally found the time to pass it along to everyone in a proper place.

We have a few different types of time lapses here with an experiment in 5 second gaps rather than our usual 1 minute intervals the entire time. We had hopes of doing a few more ambitious outdoors shoots, but with daily temperatures around -40 plus windchill, it was pretty much impossible to go farther than our backyards.
Merry belated Christmas to you all and hopefully spring is right around the corner!

Siwash Rock Underwater Time Lapse

So after alot of testing, retesting, buying the right equipment, re-testing and fails Geordie and I did it!  We have an underwater time lapse!  It worked out incredibly well especially for a first time outing where we really didn't what to expect. There were so many variables that could screw it up.  Large waves, odd tides - though we checked the weather and tide tables.  Also people horsing around with it or even stealing it. Geordie hid it but it was visible from a very public path.  It is obvious in the video where we set it down.  It is facing Stanley Park's Siwash Rock on the mussel beds.  We had to be careful minimizing our ecosystem impact gingerly climbing over the little shells to set it down and then pick it up.

Here are two stills taken from the timelapse.  We caught in several places schools of small fish.  I don't know what kind.  I was really hoping to get a crab or starfish crawling over it but no luck.  This area is usually crawling with starfish but something is killing them off and this spot was completely bereft of them.

I love the rainbow and the gods rays refracting through the water.  The light highlights the mussels and kelp in a glorious way. I hope you enjoyed these photos and timelapse.  Geordie and I are brainstorming ideas where to set it down so if you have your own thought of a good underwater spot please let us know.  It just has to be accessible by foot and relatively easy to hide.

"Roughing It" in Qualicum Bay + Bonus Vancouver Island Timelapse

A bit late in stating the fact but we have had a lot to post about lately.  So lets go back to the Easter long weekend where Geordie and I headed to the very sweet community of Qualicum Bay.  We stayed at the below place which was beach front.  We saw LOTS of Harlequin ducks, sea birds and even some whales waaaaay off in the distance. 

It also had a BBQ where Geordie and myself gorged ourselves on free meat. For some reason a lot of the time we get given free meats when we visit Vancouver Island. Last year it was fresh caught Sockeye Salmon. This year free shishkabob.  So we filled it with delicious carcinogens and ate it all up.  So much meat!  It was a great place to stay and hope to use it again.

And because that is what we do here is a timelapse taken from the fence in the first picture. It captures the tides in a wonderful way and you can see bunches of different ducks and even a seal in it.  Very lovely misty mornings.

G: Since the video above is actually a collection of timelapses, the clip she's talking about is the 2nd one. We also have some nice shots from Telegraph Cove and Tofino in there to round out the set. As always, if it won't play on its own, right click to open the original file in Vimeo :)

Sun Running

Before May is too far gone here is some photos of the annual Vancouver Sun Run.  The route goes right by our apartment. We set up a timelapse camera which unfortunately crapped out just as the main body was coming through.  We were biking that day and had to do a kind of convuluted route so as not to cross the race route.

This was taken on a pedestrian bridge somewhere in the Fairview Area. People also were dressed up in various costumes.  We saw a cookie man and superman.  Many kudos to those who ran or walked. I haven't done serious running in a while and admire the people who do so.  Geordie and I also saw the front runners. We don't have a picture but they were made out of tendon and sinew and little else.

Someone Dropped a Bear Bomb!

Timelapses are fun. Especially when you stick one at the top of a mountain and a bear photobombs it! We put this one up at the Peak of Grouse Mountain hidden at the very top a bit to the side of the chair lift.  And we left it.....for a week. The very fun result is below.  Let us know if there are places in Vancouver that you think might make for a neat time lapse. Only criteria is that it needs to be locked to something preferably in a place where its not going to be messed with. In this case it was locked to some old rebar.

As is always the case with embedding, you may need to right click and watch it directly on Vimeo if you get playback issues here. 
This is the locale where we put it. I just realized I was in this photo!  This one turned out quite well. Geordie is getting very good at spotting places that would make for a good all round panorama. Well not panorama but whatever you would call that.  360 view I guess. Or planets. I like planet views.

Just in case you missed it here is our bear bomb. Looks like an older yearling. There are some grasses with seeds near the camera which may have attracted it.  There are some birds you can see if you stop the video fast enough.  I would love to get more animals in timelapses like this. I hear rumours of a beaver in Lost Lagoon but can't find a place to put the camera that is not high traffic. May risk it anyway......

Cypress Mountain Time-Lapse

When I to do this again next year, I'll let the camera start earlier and run later as you can clearly see I missed the sunrise and sunset, but I still count it as a successful test that returned some fun results.

This is just the raw footage out of the camera as well, without any fancy stabilization, colour correction or other fancy tricks.

Galapagos Highlight Reel

 Our trip to Ecuador highlight reels will comprise of two videos. The second will feature the Amazon Rain forest. The first is completed and posted here (and on Vimeo) and is all about the Galapagos Islands. It shows some of the unique and rare flora and fauna that is native to the archipelago. Most of the species and landscapes shown have already been featured in other posts. So if there is something that catches your eye check there for more information.

Music: The Porcupine Tree "The Colour of Air"

Telegraph Cove Highlight Reel

We've finished the basic cut of our Telegraph Cove highlights and rather than sit on it and noodle stabilization for another month or two I thought I'd get it uploaded and see how everyone likes it.

A few quick notes about it. The intro staccato shots were meant to be part of a more lengthy and fluid time lapse, but our trailcam was an unruly machine and this was the best we got out of it. We've since upgraded the firmware and its working properly, but if anyone is interested in getting one themselves, drop me a line and I'll help you avoid some of pitfalls we found with the damn things.

Also some of our shots are still a little shakier than I'd like, but given they were mostly shot through long telephoto lenses with shakey hands from the pitching deck of a boat and looking into ever-changing water, I will call any result a success :P

Pride Parade Timelapse

This summer once again provided its week of parades and fireworks to celebrate gay pride and explosions. We've covered this in previous years, so for a change this year we set up our new time-lapse trailcam at the side of the parade route and let it take a picture every 30-60 seconds for 5 hours or so. The results are below and set to suitably cheesy techno music. If you don't like the size of the available preview (or if the embedded video gives you trouble), you can see it in glorious 720p here.

These sorts of trailcams are designed and intended mostly for hunters and 99.9% of the sample pictures I could see from them when we were casing them out on the internet were either 10-point bucks or turkeys. So I think its pretty great to put them to the test in a display of urban love and acceptance :P

We'll be shooting quite a selection of time-lapses in the coming weeks, so hopefully everyone following along at home can enjoy them too and won't be too sick of them by the time we're done :)

Denman Street Summer Time Lapse

Last summer when Kathryn was out in the field I left my camera running on an intervalometer for 24 hours so that the camera took a picture every minute from midnight on July 13th to midnight on July 14th.

That time lapse is embedded below, or you can check out a higher quality version of it here.

Its a fairly unremarkable day on Denman street as seen from our bedroom window, but I think even mundane time lapses are pretty incredible things. Even though we didn't have the striking clouds I would have liked that day, watching the shadows of the buildings and the window washing crew across the street is still pretty cool. I'm hoping to do a lot more of these this summer so stay posted if you like this sort of stuff as well.