The best laid plans

Graeme Skinner — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 07:44:16 +0000

Yes I know it was foolish, I went outside this morning before the Sun had even thought about showing her face, you see the Moon was sitting very close to Venus in the pre-dawn sky and it looked too good a photograph to miss. In the end I did miss it, well I saw the moon and Venus briefly as the cloud flitted past them, but it was not long enough to capture through the camera. Whilst I was outside though the thought popped into my head that I could take a series of photographs of the dawn and turn them into a small time lapse.
The camera was already in just about the right position for a series of dawn time lapse images, so I waited until my watch arrived at exactly 0703hrs and started taking photographs, then every minute on the dot I took another photograph, simple really I thought. Ten minutes in and I decided that perhaps it would have been a good idea to visit the toilet before I started taking the photographs, click, another photograph taken, sprint to the house and run upstairs, run back downstairs and sprint to the camera, click.
There was a moment when it looked like the plan had worked out, the sky started to change colour, gradually becoming pink behind the darker clouds, any minute now I thought and the whole sky will be an explosion of colour, click. The sky starts to darken, the pink is fading, I run to the house for the iPod so I can keep myself occupied in between every click. Thirty minutes in and I’m getting that sinking feeling, there will be no wonderful riot of colours this morning, from the fleeting glimpses I can see Venus is quickly fading, soon there will be nothing left of it to see, click.
Looking from the dawn sky to my side and Poppy is looking up at me expectantly, for a dog she is much smarter than me, a walk would be much more fun than standing taking the same view over and over and over, click.
Out of curiosity I put the time lapse together, at least I know a bit more about making them now, and next time it’ll work out perfectly

httpvhd://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-LEGjPYRQY

lapse – Graeme Skinner

The best laid plans