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Four-Season Timelapses
A compilation of blog posts about a project to record eleven scenes over the period of one year, then assemble the clips into time-lapse sequences showing the seasonal transitions from winter, spring summer and fall.
Wednesday, November 21, 2007 - 1:31PM 
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Season transition video update
I probably will only need one more stage to finish the four-season video timelapse project, as the leaves are about 65% gone now. This is the November 21 view from scene #1 (stage #9) shot from my front porch, which is actually turning out to be one of the better sequences due to the ease of aligning the shots and the subject-rich view. (Click the image below for a video clip)
Click for video
Here are a few grabs from the November 15 stage from a few of the Spring Hill ridgetop scenes. These scenes are due to have another stage filmed, but cloud cover and lighting issues have been delaying those for the past few days. I need clear skies with an early-morning low sun angle for the ridgetop scenes, a condition which has been hard to come by for the past couple of weeks.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007 - 5:26PM
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Season change time-lapse video update
Here is another quick update on the season change transition time-lapse video project. Today I shot the tenth stage of all eleven scenes. From the progress so far, it appears another three or four stages will be necessary through the beginning of winter to complete the full year sequences. This fall is being affected by the drought in that the color changes are happening a little different this year. Here is a video clip showing all ten stages of the Scene #6 sequence so far:
VIDEO: Season change sequence as of October 30 - WMV, 14MB
The above still image was from the last stage of Scene #6 shot on October 20. The following one was the stage shot today (October 30). Notice that the few trees that were in vivid color last week have lost most of their leaves, while everything else has not changed much at all (including the 'main subject' tree in the middle).
Here is the October 30 stage of Scene #10. Still a lot of green out there for the end of October. At this rate, it looks like it may be November 10-15 before we have most of the leaves gone.
The editing process of this project has turned out to be a challenge, particularly the scenes that show a lot of foreground. The foreground is less forgiving when the frames in each stage don't line up perfectly. For instance, I can easily correct a frame that needs a slight rotation, a nudge left-right-up-down, or a slight zoom in or out. What cannot be compensated for is if the tripod was set up just a couple of inches too far left or right. In that case, the whole perspective of the scene changes. This type of perspective change is almost impossible to avoid comepletely, but at least in the zoomed shots with no immediate foreground (like in Scene #6 shown above) this isn't much of a problem. However, the perspective change is pretty apparent with objects close to the camera.
Out of all eleven scenes, I may only end up with five or six that are usable after this project is done. Some of the stages were just too far out of alignment to be able to assemble smoothly. But, that is part of the reason that I chose eleven scenes, hoping that at least a few of them would come out.
If I do something like this again, I will not use the visual landmarks to align the shots. There is too much room for error in tripod height, angle, location and zoom. I'm thinking of using permanent camera mounts next time, where instead of using the tripod, I'll mount the camera to a pipe with a threaded end. Then, I'll drive threaded pipe sections into the ground at the various locations I want to shoot at. Then the camera mount pipe can simply be screwed into the ones driven into the ground, ensuring that the exact location, height and angle of the camera will be the same every time. The fixed pipe mounts can be driven flush with the ground so that they are well hidden from anyone that might disturb them.
Another run at this project is dependent on where I am living next year. North Carolina's landscape doesn't have dynamic season transitions like West Virginia's does, not to mention the fact that snowfall there is extremely rare.
Tuesday, October 2, 2007 - 2:11PM
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IntoSummer phase II - Summer to Winter stages
As I posted about a few months ago, 'IntoSummer' was originally an effort to create a series of high-definition time-lapse season change videos documeting the transition from winter to spring. With that segment complete, I'm focusing on a second phase to complete entire four-season time lapses. Spring 2007 in West Virginia was a little unusual, with an early warm spell followed by a sudden and prolonged deep freeze in April. The result was an early greening of vegetation that was cut short and even retrograded by the cold snap. Due to the cold weather, spring chase season travel and the Raleigh move, I never actually got to shoot the final stage of the summer transition, that is, all of the scenes with full summer greenage. My return to Charleston yesterday happened at just the right time for the continuance of the 'IntoSummer' project. Even though autumn has arrived, today the trees are still in full late summer green and just about ready to begin their annual fall color show. So, this afternoon I shot all eleven scenes in preparation for the summer-to-winter transition sequence. By November, this phase should be complete, yielding eleven full four-season timelapse sequences. I'll probably abandon the 'IntoSummer' name since this project is now comprising all four seasons.
Here are screen captures from three of the sequences showing the progress so far. Each sequence is made up of seven stages, but to save space here I'm posting just three of each - the first stage (winter scene from March 17), the fourth stage (budding trees from March 25) and the most recent stage shot today (full summer green). The next stage will be filmed once the leaves begin to change color in about a week.
Scene #10: Downtown Charleston from Spring Hill Cemetery ridgetop
Scene #6: Lone tree in front of wooded hills
Scene #1: Shadowlawn residential neighborhood
With the recent purchase of a new quad-core computer, I now have the horsepower to begin assembling the full 1080i HD stages of the season change timelapses. The challenge will be making the fine adjustments to make all of the stages line up with each other, which will involve both slight rotating, shifting and resizing of each stage. Even though I'm using printouts of frame captures along with landmarks to line up the scenes as much as possible when they are shot, it is nearly impossible to get perfect alignment every time. The end result will likely mean that I will lose a portion of each frame to produce the lowest common denominator, but still have enough for acceptable HD resolution. Once I have this process down, editing in additional stages as they are shot will be easier. I'll update this blog with the progress on this project as I go.
Tuesday, April 3, 2007 - 1:20PM
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 IntoSummer II update - Stage 6
This morning, I finished filming stage #6 of the IntoSummer II project (see the description of this project in this previous post). The vegetation here is a little over halfway 'green' as of today - about three weeks ahead of a normal spring, thanks to the early warm spell we've enjoyed recently. How the upcoming freezes will affect their progress, and this project, remains to be seen. I will be leaving for Raleigh on Wednesday or Thursday, unable to shoot another stage of these sequences until after April 15. If things go just right, the upcoming freezes will slow the rate of greening until I get back. However, I'm only a stage or two away from 'full green', so the series may still work even if the next stage is 'summer green'.
There are eleven scenes in this project, and I've figured out that each scene will have its own unique number and spacing of stages. Some scenes are greening faster than others, neccessitating more frequent filming stages. Others are moving along slower, meaning that I have to skip those during a filming stage. I will likely be elminating a stage here and there, as in some instances there isn't enough 'change' between one stage to the next.
So, here is a rough cut of stages 1 through 6 of a few of the scenes. Most of these are 4 or 5 stages long, as I deleted a few stages that were too close in appearance to to a subsequent one. Even with careful shooting to line up the shots, some are still slightly out of position. Once all of the stages are complete, the tedious task of digitally fine-matching up the stages in post-production will begin.
IntoSummer II - Stages 1-6 - WMV, 11MB
Friday, March 23, 2007 - 12:48PM
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IntoSummer II Project
Back in 2000, I undertook a project to film several winter-to-summer seasonal transition scenes. Starting in mid-March of 2000, I began taking sequential digital photos of seven different landscape scenes as winter transitioned into summer. I finished it in May, and called the series 'IntoSummer'. I planned to keep it for future video projects as well as add to the stock archive. 'IntoSummer' was not an easy task, as I had to find locations that I could easily remember the exact spot that I'd been before - as well as line up the frame as close as possible to the previous shots. You can imagine my dismay when I went to pull the project from my archives recently and for some mysterious reason, I could not find any of the photos I took for that project.
 So, to replace the original project and improve upon it, I decided to start a second 'IntoSummer II' with the HD video camera. This time, there will be eleven different scenes, with sequences consisting of intercut video clips joined with slow dissolves to keep realtime motion in the scenes (trees waving in the wind, birds flying, etc). I began this project on March 17 with a fresh coating of snow on the ground (stage #1 of scene #4 is pictured at right), and just completed stage #2 (dry and bare trees) this morning. Some of the trees and bushes around my house are already starting to get buds and blooms, so shot sequence stages #3, #4 and beyond will not be far behind. I'm hoping to get enough material that my upcoming Raleigh trip will not make me miss a critical stage in the scenes' 'greening' process. The winter-spring-summer sequences should end up taking 6 or 7 stages to complete, with another 6 or 7 stages for the summer-fall-winter sequences.
I plan to continue 'IntoSummer II' into the fall, finishing eleven complete four-season transition sequences. Of course, this is a long-term project that I might not get around to posting results for until the end of the year.
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