As some of you may know, I did a commute project this year (see here) where I took a photo on the same spot every workday of 2016. Since I have the week off, last week was my last workday, and thus the last photo for this project. To finish this project in a nice way I decided to make a video of it.
For this video I chose my favourite 71 photos, and imported them as an image sequence into Photoshop. This way I had all photos as layers in one document, where I could align them and put them on a timeline for the movie. The number 71 is quite random, I thought that using all 143 would be too much, so I selected the ones that I wanted to show and ended up with 71. You can see all 143 photos on the project page (link above).
So here is the video, the accompanying music is the song ‘Sinnerman’ by Nina Simone, from the soundtrack from The Thomas Crown Affair (great movie by the way).
I kept the pace up in the video to keep it manageable, so I decided to share my top five as still photos too:
The one I took on the first day, January 4th, is still one of my favourites. That also has to do with the position of the sun. I was late this day (after 9), which made the sun align with the tallest tree.
The next two are also from January. We had some cold mornings with dry air, creating the crispest photos and beautiful colors in the sky:
The last two in my top 5 are from November, where you see the opposite: high humidity creating dramatic skies and fog. You also see the transition in the fall from green trees to bare branches.
I loved doing this project. It became a routine to stop every day at the same spot for a photo. I only forgot it twice, those days I returned so I could still make the photo 🙂 . I was a bit concerned about getting bored with this spot, but that still hasn’t happened. I barely have two similar photos, there is a lot of variety in skies and colors. And in the final result I really like to see the changes, see the trees blow up in spring and summer, and see the grass growing and getting yellow when it was cut. I am even considering to continue this project, but maybe with a 50mm lens, and a spot closer to the edge of the canal so I can include the complete mirrored trees. I haven’t made my mind up, I still have a few days until 2017 begins!
Update:
On request I made a slower-paced version of the video. Same 71 photos, but a video of 3:00 minutes instead of 1:14 minutes.
Thanks for reading!
Nice… Very nice. Impressed by your patience, and ability to mark the sales spot. Turns your Fotos into a proof of the living surrounding
Thanks!
Excellent! I love witnessing the progression of time, which photography seems so adept at portraying in so many ways: frozen movement, long exposure, multiple exposure, etc., etc. And as usual, just plain lovely photos.
Thanks Sheldon!
Very nice!! I really love the lighting in each shot and it’s really neat to see the change over time. Well done! I want to try my hand at some time lapse videos in the new year. I always find these type of videos fascinating to watch.
Thanks for visiting Travis, I didn’t start with the video in mind, but I am happy how it came out.
I like the idea of lining up the images in layers, digital can be good for some things… I feel a fraud asking if you could post a version, less frantic, which matched the full length of the music track. Fraud because I used to make 25 FPS slideshows with an 8mm. movie camera! I now like a slower pace of life.
Looking forward to the 50mm version next year. It is interesting that I should have found your site at a time when I have reduced most of my personal work to 50 & 35 mm fixed focal length lenses.
Hi Coline, thanks! I made a slower version, not with the full length of the track as that is about 10 minutes long. In the proces of making the slow paced video I found that Flickr only displays the first 3 minutes of a video, so I made it exactly that. Hope you enjoy it!