18. October 2008 by Max.

I think Gavin and I picked the best day to go camping in October. If we went any earlier, the trees wouldn’t have been as colorful. If we went any later, it would have been a little chilly.We had perfect weather, beautiful scenery and water that wasn’t too cold.

It’s always nice getting in touch with nature.

This year, our adventure started somewhere near Eminence, MO. Once we found the drop off point, we quickly got on the river. Shortly after, we tied off to a tree to go explore a cave.

We broke a few of the posted cave rules. We didn’t have helmets and we didn’t have three sources of light. As we wound back further into the cave, we realized we shouldn’t go any further without a big flashlight. For some reason, my LED light just wasn’t cutting it!

Once we set up camp for the night, it wasn’t too long before we were doing long exposures. The sky had been cloudy all day and blocked the full moon at night.

It almost looks like a set of wings coming up out of the tree line.

I woke up early-ish the next morning. It was at least early enough to see the morning fog.

On the right, you can see the site of our campfire. Notice the demonic log that we tried to burn and it just wouldn’t. I guess it has seen it’s fair share of heat and flame.

Our tent was really dwarfed by the surrounding nature.

Our trip out in middle Missouri wouldn’t be complete without a little bit of political ingenuity. On our drive there, as we passed through a town with an abundance of McCain signs, I noticed a lone Obama sign. It was unique. It was painted on a wooden plank. I only had a quick passing glance.

On the way back home, we wanted to stop and take a picture of the sign. Once we found it, I pulled into the driveway, got my camera and got out of the car. As I am framing the image, Gavin yells to me, “That’s not an Obama sign! That’s an Obama Grave!”

So it was.

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12. October 2008 by Max.

It’s that time of the year again. The leaves are changing. The pumpkins are…pumpking. And the corn is doing whatever it does.

In Sikeston, MO at Beggs Family Farm, they have what may be the best corn maze ever. Every year, they change the path in their maze. Their maze is nothing short of an artistic corn creation. This year, the maze was designed to look like a Ford Model T with the Ford logo. Previous years designs include a dinosaur, Alcatraz and an American Flag.

As you enter the maze, you descend down a stairwell into the corny abyss.

After a miraculous finish in 40 minutes, we headed over to the corn air canon located right next to the maze.

Unfortunately, none of us were successful hitting the target. At least we all looked good trying.

Many of the areas were fenced in with roped flags. Sometimes they seemed slightly too high to hop over and slightly too low to duck under. Chris took a running start and made a flying leap over the fence.

Of course there are other interesting things going on at Beggs farm. Pig races. Weird spinning rooms that cause severe nausea and an immediate disorientation. I took pictures of those too. They will go up when I get a chance.

Tomorrow (actually it is later today at this point), we are going to Lambert’s Cafe, home of the throwed rolls. That will be an exciting gourging of food. We are all looking forward to it!

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5. October 2008 by Max.

I’m pretty addicted already…AND I’VE ONLY JUST BEGUN!

I decided to try more time lapse today. Well, tonight. I attached my camera onto my car. I hooked up hard power via a power inverter to both my camera and my laptop. There were also steel safety cables just in case something went wrong.

I wanted to shoot at two or three frames per second (fps) but my computer’s intervalometer only allowed me to shoot down to five fps.

I started in my drive way, turned out onto a main street and just drove. At one point, I decided to stop at a McDonalds. I wasn’t really hungry; I just thought it might look interesting in the final product. I then turned onto another main drag and eventually got onto the interstate (yes, I was going 60mph with my camera attached to the outside of my car).

When I got home, I was anxious to see what I got. I rendered it out as 30fps video (standard video) and since I was only able to shoot five fps, It was REALLY fast.

I then slowed the playback down to 20fps. It was still too fast. I didn’t want to slow it down too much more because it would start to look choppy. A humans persistence of vision is 16fps. In other words, if you saw a sequence of images played at 16fps, your brain would interpret it as fluid motion, however awkward the speed may appear.

To get it slow enough, I broke persistence of vision and set the playback to 12fps. It definitely looks a little choppy but it gives each image a little more time on the screen so you can see what’s going on…kind of.

There is definitely more to come. I might try one with people in a more populated setting sometime this week. Maybe even tomorrow. Anyone have any suggestions? I might try the comment left by Gavin on the last post — use a slow shutter speed to virtually eliminate people from an urban setting. I wish I had a really powerful battery backup or solar power source to take my gear into rural areas. I could also use a nice intervalometer that’s not built into a computer. Where’s my winning lotto ticket?

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5. October 2008 by Max.

Yesterday, I decided to try time lapse photography.

I tried to figure out the best place for my camera where I would have power and decided to aim it out my front window.

My camera was on a tripod with a hard line for power. It was tethered to my laptop via Firewire. My computer essentially became the dashboard for my camera. I set all of the settings on the computer screen.

After I was content with my capture settings, I went into the time lapse (intervalometer) settings. This allows me to set the intervals between pictures and how long I wanted it to shoot. I set it to shoot one picture every 30 seconds for 1,200 frames. That’s ten hours of recording images.

So I let it run. I watched a lot of TV. Thank god there were movies on!

About eight hours into it, I decided that was probably long enough since this was just a test anyways.

So after 900 frames and some heavy compression, here is what I ended up with:

Now I have to go find more things to time lapse! That is if I’m patient enough!

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1. October 2008 by Max.

Ordinarily, after spending many days inside your home with few trips out, a day spent outside is a breath of fresh air. That is unless you go to the zoo where the aroma of animal poop reigns king.

I went to the St. Louis Zoo with one thing in mind – see every single animal that the standard free admission would allow. I wanted to spend as much time out of my house as possible.

The day was filled with things that struck me as odd.

To start my oddities, it seemed that many of the animals were asleep or groggy. Everything from crocodilian creatures to pathetic pumas.

One thing that was more bizarre was the high level of hippo activity. There were at least four hippos in the tank. One of them kept swimming laps. This may not be unusual but their tank is so dirty, you can’t really see anything unless they are just about right up against the glass. This hippo happened to literally be right up against the glass.

I overheard a zoo worker say how the hippos had been extraordinarily vocal that day. They were getting a little physical with each other. Apparently hippos fight from time to time. Some of the lines on the side of the hippo pictured above are scratches and not light reflections.

I would think that if hippos were fighting, arguing or even having a somewhat heated discussion over a cup of tea right up against the glass, you would watch. Instead, many of the good tourists blocked the spectacle for everyone else by having their picture taken with the violent backdrop.

I hope their mothers flash reflected off the glass so when they go back to look at this picture a year from now, they will have no idea what was behind them that was so important that they needed to block it off from the rest of the world in an attempt to capture the memory for themselves.

On the way out of the zoo, I looked up to the trees only to find a man tending to an animal…with a paint brush.

Ok. so it is a fake animal. It is there to represent prey that a big cat would drag up a tree. I saw it on Jack Hannah once. I guess it was time for a detailing.

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