Wildflowers and Rain Time Lapse
This time-lapse was an experiment to capture rain drops moving around on wildflowers as they were rained on. While it did not really work the way I had hoped I like the way it turned out – it is a peaceful and gentle video. Calming even.
To view the video click on the image below.
I find that viewing it at high-resolution in WordPress runs a bit rough and recommend you move over to YouTube and watch if full screen at high resolution.
The white flowers are the Fawn Lily, the blue are Camas and the pink are Shooting Stars. These are among the most abundant of the spring wildflowers in our area. The Fawn Lilly is perhaps the most photographed as well.
This one has to go into the learning column too – I need much longer set ups and greater gaps between exposures for this kind of time-lapse. Also, I think that the scenes with less panning or zooming are more effective and more peaceful and allow greater concentration on what little action there is visible – the occasional drop of water sliding on a stem or the slow weighing down of a leaf or blossom or petal by the weight of an accumulating drop. On the other hand, it is good to learn how to get the panning and so on working smoothly in LRTimelapse.
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Technical Details: Canon EOS 5Dmkii, SMC Takumar 100mm/f4 macro lens, ISO100, f11, varying from 0.15 to 0.6 second, 2002 images in total, taken 2 seconds apart with the aid of a Pixel TW-282 timer. Manual settings, custom white balance, RAW files shot at 3861 x 2172. Edited in Lightroom 4 and LRTimelapse 2.3.1, then rendered as a movie through LR4 Slideshow module, with LRTimelapse templates. I chose the 24fps option.
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burnt embers 
Beautiful images! I love the time lapse – just wonderful!
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Thank you Ryan. All the time consumed by processing images means I don’t get out and see other people’s work as much as I would like. Including your blog.
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I understand. I feel I’ve been missing out on others’ work as well – yours included.
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I too really enjoyed the way the camera moved around in the sequence. Smooth and well executed. A lot of hard work but well done!
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Hi Andy. Thanks for that comment. It does take quite a bit of time, but the software sure makes it easier.
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Really liked the flowers at the 41/42 second mark! Great pan/zoom job and ditto to the rest of what Ken said! 😉
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Thanks David! For that sequence of the Camas bud it was raining harder than the others and thus there was more action with the water drops, more like I had intended for the whole series. And I started off with greater magnification as well which when zooming really gets to some fine detail. I need to try this with my 1:1 macro gear – my old Canon FD mount 50mm macro and extension tubes are dying to get off the bellows unit and go outdoors.
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(See Ken’s comment. I can’t add anything to what he already said.) (Also, I am going to try to comment BEFORE he does one of these days!)
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Thanks Melinda! The problem might be that Ken is from W-WLIWL, and that surely is inspiration enough to get an early start on each and every day. Might be hard to compete with, the Webster effect.
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Plus he’s one time zone ahead of me, giving him a double unfair advantage. I wonder when he goes on vacation….?
(Although if one is from W-WLIWL, vacations are likely unnecessary.)
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I thought the pan and zoom was exceptionably well done. The smoothness of the TL was excellent and well worth the time and effort you put into this. Also, beautiful subject matter is a key point, too.
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Thanks Ken, on all fronts. The LRTimelapse software is terrific, the learning comes in choosing where to start a pan or zoom so that it is not too abrupt, or somehow interferes. I think some of these happen too quickly, and one perhaps is almost too slow. But it is fun to work with. I am so glad I have spent the last 18months learning how to control my camera and the editing too, and what is involved in taking a decent shot. Timelapse is about all of those things, plus more on top. Had I tried this when I first got the camera, the results would have been much less satisfactory. My imagination certainly wanders along some of the possible paths of doing timelapse for more abstract subjects, with long exposure, with extreme closeups of something or other, using HDR. Various subjects I have experimented with combined with timelapse. Some interesting possibilities out there.
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