My music composition here is the same as the previous posting. I decided to place it into a video with some time-lapse clips. One of the things I’ve enjoyed about time-lapse is that it reminds me of those years so long ago when I shot photos on film. You’d have a notion of what you had captured, but until you developed the film and made some prints, you’d not really know what the images would look like. With time-lapse on a DSLR you have a very good idea of what the individual frames look like (composition, lighting, etc.), but it’s that motion part that remains elusive until you process the sequence. It can be completely different than your expectations (well, it is for me at the moment, partially because I’m relatively new at this).

The biggest downside is the tedium. I try and remember to bring a book along. Often I plan on hitting at least four locations, shooting for 30 minutes to an hour each. The plan usually is modified to three stops because I’m tired of sitting on my ass, brushing away ants, and listening to that shutter click away 500 to 900 times. I’m currently enamored by slow shutter work, one to two seconds per exposure. It’s nice to blur people, cars, flowing water, foliage in the wind, but it means stacking a whole series of filters to subdue the sunlight. The train crossing the bridge in this piece is perfect, adding a ghostly and insubstantial air, as ephemeral as the clouds. Most of the clips were shot on the southside of San Antonio. Two were downtown. And two were shot at a favorite campsite of mine on the northwestern shore of  Amistad Reservoir.

I am very cognizant of the frame as far as the composition goes; however, I often forget to allow for the native 3:2 aspect ratio of the camera when in still mode. In some of these clips I have deformed the image by stretching it instead of cropping. I really need to remember to plan for the 16:9 presentation. I’m editing in After Effects because of the wonderful tools available to work with the raw files from my Canon 7D.

The title is from Shakespeare, from a line spoken by Ophelia to Hamlet. It’s not terribly relevant here, but I’ve always enjoyed its cadence and drowsy melancholy.