life, will find a way

You buy a house.

Ink has barely dried.

You see your first crack,

life.

As you tend to your yard you notice funny things.

Plants grow where you least expect,

sometimes in impossible places.

Places I could never coax a plant to grow.

Usually weeds, find a way.

But this summer a flower started it's fight.

For weeks I watched as a little flower

squeezed it's way into a crack in front of my garage.

It's position was perfect, centered on the right stall

of the garage, any vehicle coming or going

would pass right over.

I first shot footage of the flower for a

Philip Bloom short film challenge.  

I didn't make the deadline.

But here you go, the challenge, create a sequence.

Enjoy.

life, will find a way.

Homemade Toy Rockets

I learned how to make homemade rockets from scratch in shop class

in middle school.  Yes, I know "what is shop class" something most

schools got rid of and I think one of the reasons our country is in

trouble.  Making toy rockets from cardboard tubes and paper

teaches a young mind many things.  Not that I'm completely

against buying a kit at the store, but a rocket you build on your own

is your creation. Watching it fly, figuring out why it flew the way

it did is exactly the kind of exercise a young mind needs.

This Christmas I made a few homemade toy rockets for my Godson.

He is a little young to build and shoot them himself but I figured

the time had come to introduce him to the most fun you will ever

have in six seconds.

Here is a link to the video I shot of the launches.  Click here.

I shot the launches with a GoPro Hero3 Black Edition.

At the end of the video I slowed them down to 5% to see how well the camera captured it.

  All of these shots were captured at 720p at 120fps.
This is an interesting example because we were launching right around sunset.
It's visual stunning in person and a good test for the new Hero3 in a low light situation.

Want to see more?  My Godson is the son of DSLR expert and fellow blogger

ChadSorianoPhotoBlog.  He posted some more photos and a video he

shot of the launches with a Canon EOS M over on his blog, check it out.

Canon T4i Night Flying Time-Lapse

"Why would you want to do that?"

This was the question posed to me by a flight attendant when I told her

that I was shooting a time-lapse out the window of my most recent

commercial flight. Uhhhhh ...... cause it's cool?

I get that all the time.  If your reading this I'm guessing you get it.

I don't sit still very well, if I have a camera I will be shooting.

On my most recent night flight home, on a new 737-900, I noticed

that the paneling under the window was quite smooth, so would it

support a suction cup holding my Canon T4i? Could I get the very

elusive night flying time-lapse?  Yes and no.

  It worked, but it also failed twice.

  

Here are the results, click here.

The camera was set to ISO 1600, with an EFS 10-22 lens.

I shot 6 second exposures @3.5 every two seconds.

The camera was mounted using a Fat Gecko suction cup. Sorry

no pictures of the set-up.  It was like trying to do surgery in a phone booth.

The hardest thing about trying to pull this off is light leaks, see below, the

way airliner windows are designed it makes it very hard.  I used my

navy blue action fleece to cover the top of the lens. There are several frames

where you can see light intrusion, interesting attempt but not really

ready for prime time.  Now if I had access to a private jet with clean windows 

I could probably dial this in, but until then you get what you can.

For more information about doing time-lapses with a CanonT4i and the 

intervalometer I use check out my previous post here.