2013 Family Pumpkin Carving Contest

This year I had a hard time making the effort because I was so fatigued after taking my kids camping. We had a good time though. Somehow we let my teenaged sister talk us in to letting 2 of her best friends judge the competition and believe it or not her kitty cat took the prize.

2012 Family Pumpkin Carving Contest

We had another good year for our annual family pumpkin carving contest. The smack talking was at an all time high, while the quality of work may be in question. We again did not allow the judge to know which pumpkin belonged to whom before judging in order to make it as fair as possible. In addition to the immediate family, we had 2 entries from relatives visiting from out of town. The top pic shows all entries. On the bottom are my household's entries. Mine is on the top right, it got 1st place. My wife got 3rd, it is in the top left spot. My oldest boy came in dead last. He actually made his design and cut it by himself this year for the first time, his is on the bottom. My youngest boy made the design and mom cut it for him, his is top middle and it earned the next to last spot. The judge somehow thought he was going for the R2D2 look and gave him a small break.

2011 Family Pumpkin Carving Contest

We had another successful pumpkin carving contest this year. We had no injuries, no fights, and fair judging. There were only eight entries, all are pictured above. The youngest 2 entrants, both my children had to draw their design and my wife cut the pumpkin from that design. Everyone else did all their own work from start to finish. As always no foreign props were allowed and stencils could not be used either. Members of my household made a clean sweep (below). My wife came in first place with the blazing head (top right). I had the second place pumpkin seen on the bottom with the arms and the crown. My 7 year old came in third with the scowling vomit look on the far left and my 3 year old's was fourth with the sagging left eye (top middle). Thanks to our judges who are new to the neighborhood and are now glad we select different guest judges to help us out every year.

The Setup for the Decaying Berries Time-lapse

For my recent time-lapse of a strawberry, blackberries and raspberries decomposing in a petri dish I used a Pentax Optio W90 which seems to be a great camera for shooting time-lapses. It has a built in intervalometer with lots of flexibility in settings. Also it is weather resistant and can be used outside or underwater. It has two macro settings with one of them for use at 1cm. The intervalometer function can be used with multiple settings such as auto flash and macro. To get around the camera's limited battery life, I ordered an extra Pentax D-Li88 rechargable battery that allows me to switch them out periodically and let one charge while the other is being used. Charge time is about 2 hours or less. With my setup, I attached the camera to a sturdy block, with the opening for changing batteries off to the side so I could change the battery every 3-5 days without moving the camera at all. The camera automatically took one picture every 20 minutes and it is played back at 30 frames per second. I used Quicktime Pro to make the movie from all the still shots. I made the music using Sony ACID Music Studio 7.

Time-lapse of the Week #6

Here is a nice time-lapse of a corn field maze and the evening sky by YouTube user KenScottPhotography.



Of course I have to include my own time-lapse. This is part of my compost heap project. I zoomed in on the pumpkin as it breaks down over a 3 week period. One picture was taken every 30 minutes and it is played back at 30 fps. As of today the compost heap is still being filmed. I am using a Pentax Optio W90.

Time-lapse of the Week #4

This week's featured time-lapse is of 1 tree, 3 people, and 8 hours of cutting compressed down to 2 minutes with some nice zydeco music by Preston Frank and Family. The video was posted by brightcourse .

And now just for fun I'll throw in another great one by Jay at milapse of Keweenaw Peninsula. It is packed with some beautiful scenes. This is by far the best quality that I have seen this week but he is such a pro that I don't really count him as being in the same league as most of the others.

Time-lapse of the Week #3

Here is a nice time-lapse video of the assembly of a giraffe skeleton in the library of the Santa Rosa Junior College Petaluma campus. This was posted by ThePressDemocrat.



Also, yesterday I posted a brief video time-lapse of the compost heap in my backyard. It is just a brief preview of an ongoing project.

Time-lapse of the Week

Here is my time-lapse that I posted on YouTube this week. It is of a small rice field being harvested. The period of filming was about 2 hours. I took a picture every 5 seconds then played them back at a rate of 30 fps.

Here is an awesome video showing the life cycle of the Sara Orange Tip Butterfly using high speed, traditional and time-lapse filming techniques from one of the best, jcmegabyte:

And here is a great one of a construction project from timelapseman:

A Rotoscoped Animation of Rotary Nystagmus Due to BPPV

A few years ago when I made my claymation version of the Dix-Hallpike and Epley Maneuvers for BPPV, I also made a lame attempt to show an example of rotary nystagmus with a claymation eye but that didn't turn out so well and I forgot about it. I have now returned to the subject but with a new twist. I used some new animation software to create an animation of rotary nystagmus. I also threw in the claymation portion of the Dix-Hallpike video with a few modifications to parallel the test findings. It turned out even better than I expected it to. I used Toon Boom Studio 5 to rotoscopically animate a normal close-up video that I made of a face with one eye in the frame. Then I manipulated the eye layer of the drawing to simulate the rotational movements of the eye associated with BPPV. Here is the final product:

Super Extreme Speed Painting - Amaryllis Flower

I have a new technique for painting that allows me to save time while creating beautiful works of art so watch closely and enjoy. Be sure to watch until the very end to see how this artwork really comes to life. The artwork is all original and the music was made with Sony's Acid Music Studio 7.0.

Really this is kind of just a spoof some of the speed painting videos I have seen on YouTube. It is not too hard to tell that I used the chroma key effect in making the the video, but then when the time-lapse portion of the flower starts then it is a dead give away. I just used a canvas and covered it with blue paint as evenly as possible while filming. The biggest problem was getting the paint even and trying to avoid shadows. I also should have noticed that the other room in the background was dark and shadowy and parts of it fell within the color range that I was keying out.

I Have Been Touched by His Noodly Appendage!

I was putting together a time-lapse video of some mushrooms that I found growing in my yard when I saw a miracle. The almighty revealed himself in this video footage. I will admit that it did require the use of Sony's Vegas Movie Studio HD and a green screen to coax this miraculous event into existence. Nonetheless, it was a truly life changing and enlightening experience. The main things I learned are that He is full of noodly goodness and that if you want to make the green screen (chroma key) effect work, the lighting and color of the screen have to be perfectly even, you can't have any shadows at all.

Time-lapse Ice Melting in a Wine Glass

click to view video

This Time-laspe video was taken over several hours with my Canon PowerShot S3 IS along with my recently purchased GBTimelapse softwae, Both of which have been very satisfying so far. I took a picture about every 5 seconds during the shooting. The main faults are that I accidentally got my foot hung in a cord and knocked the camera off the table, which is noticealbe at about 13 seconds when you see the glass shift a little. I also was not able to figure out how to turn on the macro funtion with the GBTimelapse software until near the end of the shooting. It is not apparent on the YouTube version due to the degree of compression but you can see it at around the 2/3 mark on the quicktime version. I used my Sony Acid Music Studio software to create the music.

Here is the YouTube version of Ice Melting in a Wine Glass. Here are the rest of my time-lapse and stop motion videos.

Time-lapse Crystals Growing

Click to view Video, 6.9 mb, 33 sec, Quicktime

This is one of my first videos made with my recently purchased Canon PowerShot S3 IS. The main reason I chose this camera over the newer Canon PowerShot S5 IS is that I had read that the intervalometer feature was not in the later model and of course it was a little cheaper. I used the intervalometer to take a picture every 4 minutes during the 2 days that I allowed the crystals to grow. I used the "Space Age Crystal Growing Kit" as directed except that I didn't place any rocks in the solution to seed the crystals. The video turned out about okay, the crystals grew, but the visual effect is kind of bland. The quicktime version on my site is much sharper than the YouTube version. I made the music using my Sony Acid Music Studio software.

You can see my other time-lapse and stop motion videos here.

Time-lapse Sunset from the Hancock Tower

click the pic to view 3.5mb, 7 sec.

This is a brief time-lapse video I made in Chicago while on a visit there back in October. We were up in the bar of the Hancock tower and obviously had an excellent table. I used my good ol' Sony Cybershot, taking each picture about every 15 seconds while resting the camera on the back of the booth I was sitting in. It is a little short because we didn't think to start taking the pics until the sun was almost all the way down.

Here's the video at YouTube.

Other time-lapse and stop motion videos can be seen here.

Conspiracy

In order to remind myself that I shouldn't take myself so seriously, I present this drawing. I made it a few years ago in preparation for a painting I made for a friend.

From my sketchbook 10 years ago, digitally enhanced for sharpness. I like it most for its simplicity which may to some extent conceal my lack of drawing ability. The intent was to have the viewer initially see it as a potentially real structure, then on further inspection realize that it is not possible. You can see from the upper left corner, I was thinking of the pythagorean theorem at the time that I drew it, but it played no part in producing the drawing.

Name This Subject

I painted this picture several years ago in my sketch pad. Its not that great, but it should be recognizable to anyone who has seen it a few times. It is from a fairly well known location. If anyone can tell me who, what and where this is, I will be impressed and appreciative. I don't really have any prizes for the first to get it right, maybe I'll make a permanent link to your website or blog on the post or something. Just name it with your response.
Update-Since I currently have a readership of somewhere between 0 and 1, I will leave a hint to narrow it down so that the next person who stumbles across this site will have a chance if interested.
Hint: This location is a short walk from the Isle of La Grande Jatte on a Sunday afternoon.
Hint #2:This is in Grant Park.
Hint #3: Due to an overwhelming response, I will finally end the suspense. Click HERE for a picture and info about this monument. It is the Christopher Columbus Monument in Grant Park in Chicago.