A Picture is a Voiceless Poem

World Wide Leadership Training 2013

2013-09-05T13:40:00.000-07:00

The Lord needs us to do His work and he will put all of His power behind it. D&C 84:88 And whoso receiveth you, there I will be also, for I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up. President Eyring testified of the importance of this training.

“The power that is with us is infinitely greater than the forces that attack true happiness. Our safety and our success require only that we align our intents and our hearts with God’s wishes and so with His power. This training is a guide and an encouragement to make that alignment and to take others with us. I bear you my witness that Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ live. They love you and your family. They are perfectly aware of you; your needs, your wants, and your potential. The blessings of the priesthood and its keys are available to you and to every member of your family everywhere in the world. You can be sure of that even in the dark times. Our families can be strong and at peace.”

President Eyring further said, “This training is designed to help us learn, through the power of the Holy Ghost, how Heavenly Father would have us minister, particularly in families.”

Your ward should have been given a DVD of this training but it is also available online. https://www.lds.org/training/wwlt/2013?lang=eng It is easily downloadable or can be watched via streaming. We have been encouraged to use it in Stake and Ward Councils as well as in families and in our callings. Each video segment has a PDF discussion guide that can help facilitate discussion in families and in council meetings.

This is a valuable resource for the sisters in your wards to use to strengthen their families through family home evening lessons, personal gospel study, and family gospel study. It is also a valuable resource to help sisters who do not live in a home where a priesthood holder resides understand that they also have access to priesthood power in their homes.

This training encourages us to counsel together and to draw more fully on the power of the priesthood in our callings. Barbara W. Winder, a former General Relief Society President said, “unity is ‘not simply a matter of the sisters working together, but that we are partners with the priesthood bretheren. We are companions in the work.’” (pp. 141) We are equally responsible as brothers and sisters to move this work forward.

Elder Oaks said, “The prophet Joseph Smith told the early sisters that he had something better for them than a written constitution. Being organized under priesthood authority they were to reject worldly concepts of power and seek the power that flows down from heaven for those functions and to those individuals who are using their time and talents in the Lord’s way.”

When teaching about the World Wide Leadership Training 2013, the General Relief Society Training 2013 beautifully taught how we have access to priesthood power

· When we access priesthood ordinances

· When we make and keep sacred covenants

· When we participate in all aspects of temple work (remembering covenants and promised blessings)

· When we renew covenants through the sacrament

· When we receive delegated authority when we are set apart in our callings

· When we work in unity in priesthood councils, in ward councils, in stake councils, in family councils and when we are counseling together in our presidencies

· When we receive priesthood blessings

· “Through delegated authority and personal righteousness ward and stake Relief Society presidents can act with priesthood power. We can receive inspiration, have access to all the gifts of the sprit, have the sustaining blessing of the Lord’s power in our callings, and have confidence that the Lord will direct our work. Through covenant making and righteous covenant keeping all sisters can have access to priesthood power in calling down the blessing of heaven for themselves, for their families, and in their callings.”

This training bears powerful testimony of the need for us to continue on the covenant path and for us to help the sisters within our stewardship to make and keep all of the sacred covenants available to us through the priesthood of God.

President Eyring said “Never waste an opportunity to teach and exemplify the love of God extended through the priesthood.”

Please encourage your sisters to use this training in their homes. The Holy Ghost will testify of the truth contained therein and their homes will be strengthened and protected by an increased faith in the power of the priesthood.

Neil Diamond Kentucky Derby Pie

2013-01-27T07:31:00.003-08:00

Every January a friend of mine had a Neil Diamond Birthday party. It is rediculiously fun with a game of "Neilo" (where we group sing the Neil Diamond songs we have on our Bingo cards) and Pin the Chest Hair on Neil". We also bring food inspired by a Neil Diamond song. This year I made a derivation of the famous Derby Pie inspired by the song "Kentucky Woman" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-YpI-eJgDc

A note about corn syrup. I searched specifically for a recipe that did not use corn syrup. I know that there is no decisive evidence that corn syrup is metabolized differently than other sugars http://scopeweb.mit.edu/?p=2080 however I prefer to eat foods that are as close to natural as I can get them. With that said maybe in the future I'll try this recipe with honey or maple syrup rather than refined sugars.

Here is the recipe:

1 cup light brown sugar
1/4 cup white sugar
1/2 cup butter (melted)
2 eggs
1 T flour
1 T milk
1 t vanilla
1 cup chopped pecans
1 cup semi sweet chocolate chips
9" pie shell

Combine all ingredients and pour into a 9" pie shell

Bake at 350 for 25 minutes covered in tinfoil. Then 15-20 minutes uncovered.

note: I forgot to add the flour and I had to cook it longer than the above instructions.

Solar Eclipse May 20, 2012

2012-05-20T19:27:00.001-07:00

I was able to capture a quick time lapse of the Solar Eclipse tonight. My Canon Rebel XT with a 300 mm zoom lens and a welding hood placed over the lens made for a great spur of the moment telescope!

I took a picture every 3 seconds and use a 1/50sec exposure, f5.6, ISO 100

Magic on the Sidewalk

2012-05-20T13:29:00.001-07:00

The chalk art festival in Bountiful, Utah is sponsored by the Joy Foundation which “help[s] local youth to discover talents, develop confidence and overcome adversity through arts.”
It is in it’s eight year but I didn’t discover it until last year when a friend and I were running on Main Street in Bountiful and saw the chalk art going up.
This year the festival ran Thursday – Saturday and a big rain storm was forecast for Friday. Although the artists covered their work in plastic much of it was damaged. Some left it as it was and it created interesting textures in their art. Other’s touched up their work where it had been damaged. And a few cleaned the sidewalk and started all over again.
Here is one of the pieces that was damaged by the rain but not so much that it needed to be repaired. You can see the striated lines where the rain soaked plastic pressed down onto the chalk art.

Here is a piece by Stacy VanArsdale that was partially completed before the rain started.

And here is the same piece after it had been completed and the damage from the rain fixed.

This artist started all over again after the rain storm. Here is the beginning of her work on Friday evening.

And here is the finished art work which won the Adult 1st Place.

The Avengers was a common theme at this festival and this piece won the People’s Choice Award

The Hunger Games was also a common theme.

There were also a lot of zebra’s. All of them very colorful!

This was one of my favorite pieces.

This piece made me laugh right out loud when I understood the perspective from which it was drawn.

There was a lot of great creativity in design.

This one was captioned “Picasso’s Guernica meets Toy Story 3.”

I love how this artist integrated the man hole cover into the classic Van Gogh work of Starry Starry Night.

There was also a lot of space for young and old artists alike to create their own works after being inspired by the artists’ work. It was really fun to walk along and see all of those creations.

Fast Train - Slow Camera

2012-04-26T08:58:00.001-07:00

Inspired by +Gene Bowker I went out and shot trains. I leared a few things about shooting trains. 1) It is really boring waiting for a train, 2) setting up the shot ahead of time doesn't help because the train comes down the wrong set of tracks, and 3) it is really ESHILARATING when the train is rushing by and the world starts to whirl around you.

This image was shot at ISO 100, 3.2 sec exposure, 32 aperture, 238 mm zoom on my trusty Canon EOS DIGITAL REBEL XT.

Multiplicity

2012-04-19T22:33:00.001-07:00

The first step in taking this picture was setting my camera up on my tripod and setting my interval timer to take a shot every 10 seconds. From there I just walked around the frame, smiled, and ignored the fact that I looked really silly!

Once I had the pictures taken, I loaded all the ones I wanted to use onto photoshop.

I picked one picture to paste all of the other self-portraits into. From there I used the Lasso tool to draw a line around me in one picture, copied it, pasted it, and then tried to match the spot where it fit as best as I could. It is kind of like putting a puzzle together. If you look at the picture on the left you can see where I have used to Lasso tool to delineate what to copy. In the picture in the middle you can see that I have pasted it but not yet placed it.

I made a second version of the picture with one more me =). Although I used photoshop, Gimp is a free photo editing software that would do just as good of a job as photoshop did.

Cactus League Baseball Spring Training–Texas Rangers vs San Francisco Giants

2012-03-30T10:39:00.001-07:00

I think that going to the Old Ball Game is almost as relaxing as sitting on the beach. There is just enough action to make it interesting but just enough lull in the game for you to be able to sit back, relax, and enjoy the cool night air. Spring training baseball is even better because you can get much closer to the action!

We were lucky to be sitting right on the edge of the 1st base line where the Texas Rangers players walked back to the locker room. Many players walked by but only Josh Hamilton http://espn.go.com/blog/dallas/texas-rangers/post/_/id/4880443/josh-hamilton-pleased-with-his-spring and one other signed autographs. I enjoyed watching the excited fans get autographs as much as I enjoyed watching the game. And I have a lot of respect for players who will take the time to greet their fans.

Poised to get an autograph

Excitedly waiting for players ……… But no luck this time.

A loyal Texas fan

Holi Festival Color Throw Sequence

2012-03-28T20:26:00.001-07:00

Krishna Dancing at the Holi Festival (Festival of Colors)

2012-03-28T14:26:00.001-07:00

I saw many beautiful expressions of joy at the Holi Festival at the Krishna Temple in Spanish Fork, Utah but none compared to the joy I saw on the face and in the body of this dancer. When I saw her, there was already a large crowd gathered around her. She was both fully experiencing joy independent of the crowd as well as being aware of the joy she was bringing the crowd through her expressive dance.

Her dance was a mixture of traditional hula hooping, moving her body through the hula hoop, and hand gestures. I searched the internet to see if I could find more information on the meaning of this dance. I found several YouTube videos but no specific information about Krishna dancing with a hula hoop.

I was able to find information about Krishna dancing in general on this site http://krishna.org/kirtana-the-song-of-ecstasy-the-dance-of-the-soul/ It says that Krishna dancing is called “kirtana” and “There is no motive in performing kirtana. It is the song and dance of ecstasy, the dance of the soul. The soul is dancing; therefore, the body is dancing. “

I know very little about Krishna beliefs and practices beyond what I have heard preached between color throws the two years that I have been to the festival but much of it seems to be about being your best self and living with joy. Certainly ideas that most of us could benefit from integrating into our own lives. It is odd perhaps to compare Dave Ramsey’s teaching to that of Krishna but I heard both talk about not wasting time on trying to make your weakness strong but rather work on making your strengths even stronger. Because you will never excel at your weaknesses but you will be able to excel at your strengths. I also heard preached at the festival the law of attraction. The Law of Attraction is basically that you attract to you and go toward those things that you think about, be they positive or negative. I personally believe that it takes a lot of hard work to get the positive outcomes that you want but focusing on the positive outcomes rather than all of the barriers to achieving them certainly makes it a lot easier to keep working towards those outcomes.

Here are some additional pictures of the dance.

Tuesdays with Morrie

2012-03-22T09:28:00.001-07:00

I just ran across a paper which I wrote for a class I took during my Occupational Therapy program called “Death, Dying, and Bereavement.” The assignment was simply to write a reflection paper about a book about death and dying. I was reminded of the power of Tuesdays with Morrie and wanted to share my reflections.

I first read this book several years ago, just after I had written a paper on Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). I chose the topic for my paper, because of a comment my grandmother had made about a friend who had ALS. In her frank manner she simply said, “that is the worst disease.” I find it ironic that the effects of the same disease, affecting a man who saw beyond the demyelination of his own nervous system, could bring so much richness and beauty into the world. It is certainly a book which has affected me as well as countless others who otherwise probably would not have picked up a book about dying.

I first read the book on a Thanksgiving flight to North Carolina. It was a powerful book in my life then. I began it again on a Thanksgiving flight to Boston – Morrie’s home – and finished it as I returned again to my home in Salt Lake City.

I must admit that I had a certain amount of fear in reading this book again because I knew that it was about right living and I knew that I was not especially happy with the way that I was living. When I started to read the book, I was so astonishingly amazed that there was no pain in it. There was no condemnation, only a compassionate arm placed around one’s shoulder with a gentle nudge of love to show what living can be, what living can mean. The book was very healing for me. It made me grateful for the mighty internal struggle that I have gone through this semester because it has made me a better person, a more focused student, and much more appreciative of every moment and much more careful with every moment I am alive.

I think that it is hard for one not to love Morrie. I felt this way as I was reading the book. I think that the love that I felt for him – and the connectedness with the story that I felt as I was flying into the city that was such a part of the story – made me feel so much more love and appreciation for the friend I was visiting in Boston and for the two friends who would also be flying in on a later flight to Boston. How could I not love them, how could I not cherish them when every moment is so important.

On the return flight home, as I was nearing the middle of the second to last page of the book, my eyes were filled with tears, my nose was running, the airline steward was asking me if I wanted pretzels, and my friend sitting next to me was asking me a question. My instinct was to hide my face and tears with a diverted look and a short answer and to finish the last paragraphs of the book in which I was so engrossed. My heart told me that I could not read a book such as Tuesdays with Morrie while ignoring a friend. I raised my face to her, answered her question, which involved solving a “puzzle” out of her business administration text book. We continued to work on puzzles out of the book and continued to have a fabulous conversation about a lighthouse we had seen the day before. We spoke about life and that living it required not only the what (i.e. school, family, work) but more importantly, the how (i.e. quality, right living, etc). I concentrated on being present with her, in that moment and I appreciated the opportunity which Morrie had given me – not to escape into this beautiful world – but rather to enjoy a wonderful friend in mine.

Morrie served as my guide on this trip to Boston. Knowing that I was so near to the geographical details – and even the temporal details – of this last months chronicled in this book helped me to hold his beautiful perspective near to me and made me appreciate so richly – yet without holding desperately onto it – the time that I had to be with three very dear friends.

Thank you Morrie!

Sanmenxia Underground Houses & Yellow River

2012-03-22T09:25:00.001-07:00

A unique feature of the area around Sanmenxia is that the land is made of a very fine mud. Because of this it is very easy to dig into the earth and build structures. The orphanage director took us to a tourist spot outside of town where there were many houses/rooms built underground. The rooms are wonderfully cool inside. While there we ate a traditional meal cooked in outdoor earthen oven. As with all meals in China is was delicious and way more food than we could eat.

The stairway into the underground houses.

Looking down into the underground houses from ground level.

Detail of a window at the underground houses.

The Yellow River also runs through Sanmenxia. There are two major rivers in China, the Yellow River being one of these. The Yellow River is of significance to Chinese people because it is a place from which their ancestors come from. They made the an analogy of these people being similar to an ancient native culture such as the Mayans. So being able to go to the Yellow River is like being able to go back to your roots.

Sanmenxia – 3 door gorge – 三门峽

2012-03-22T09:18:00.002-07:00

Sanmenxia is the city where we worked in the orphanage. We were very delighted to find that it is a less humid, less hot, and less polluted city than much of China. When asked at the end of the trip by my Chinese colleague who had invited me on the trip which city was my favorite I told her that I enjoyed each city for different reasons. I enjoyed Sanmenxia because I felt like I had the opportunity to get to know people there, see what normal (not tourist) life was like, and the people were so friendly and nice to each other and to us. Sanmenxia had a small town feel where people still felt connected to each other. At 300,000 people it is considered a small city by Chinese standards.

As I’ve stated before, the occupational therapy work at the orphanage was very intense. Intense because of the long hours and intense because of the wide range of strong emotions. The orphanage has requested confidentiality standards not dissimilar to what my employers in the States require so I can’t show any pictures of our work there. Our work consisted of a needs assessment, training through treatment, and formal trainings. Our main focus was to bring more activities into the daily routines of the kids in order to foster development (cognitive, motor, etc).

We also had a bit of time to tour in Sanmenxia.

One morning I needed to go to the store before we went to the orphanage but found that it was not open so I took a walk up to a pagoda park not far from our hotel.

View of the pagoda from below

Looking back at the city from the pagoda

Everywhere you look in China, something is under construction. I was lucky to happen upon a Grand Opening celebration with a drum group performing. I was talking to someone in broken Chinese & English while I was watching the drummers. He kept asking me, “What is this”?” and then he would say “beautiful”. I finally realized that he was asking me if I thought the music was beautiful. I was glad to finally be able to answer his question in the affirmative.

Sanmenxia has a city square that seems to be more in a downtown area. It was much busier than the area of town we were in. It was a lot of fun and I took several videos of the people doing group dancing and of a man doing Chinese calligraphy with water.

Just after I took this video one of the dance groups finished and a HUGE mass of people came toward me. I was about 15 feet from the rest of my group but it took a great effort to maneuver through all those people walking between us!

I loved this mural. It was right by one of the grocery stores that I frequented. I love the motorcycles parked beneath it, the Great Wall at the base, and the cuteness of it because the Chinese people love cute =).

The Great Wall

2012-03-22T09:03:00.002-07:00

“A Chinese saying goes that ‘he who has not climbed the Great Wall is not a true man’” (Badaling Great Wall museum)

As you can see from the picture, we were not the only ones to become “true men” that day. We arrived early to the wall and there were many many people when we arrived but by the time we left there were so many people that I literally had to squeeze through the towers! The crowd however was far from a nuisance, the energy of every person’s excitement to be at the Great Wall just made it that much more special to be there.

Many times while I was in China I wished that I had a time line of the dynasties and emperors (you probably will too after reading the quotes from the museum in the following paragraph!) Chinese history is vast and complex. It was amazing to be there and to grasp even small pieces of it.

“The Great Wall started to be built in the Spring and Autumn period over 2,500 years ago, and continued to be built in many dynasties afterwards it was constructed by various peoples.” “The Qin Great Wall was built by the first unified multi-ethnic feudal state in Chinese history. The Han Great Wall was the longest in length in Chinese history” “From the Wei and Jin Dynasty to the Song and Yuan dynasties, northern nomadic peoples established regimes in the Central Plains. Among these, the Northern Wei, the Eastern Wei, the Northern Qi, the Northern Zhou, and the Liaojin all built Great Walls” “After it was founded, the Ming Dynasty built the Great Wall to reinforce its reign. The Great Wall was built almost incessantly during the 200-odd years of the dynasty, when its length reached more than 8,800 kilometers. The Ming Great Wall surpassed the Great Wall in any other dynasty in the time and extent of construction and the completeness of defense system and structure.” (Badaling Great Wall Museum).

One of the most fascinating things that I learned about the Great Wall was that not only did it serve as defense against Northern tribes, it allowed for “political, economic, and cultural development” because it allowed for a safe communication East to West across the dynasty.

(A Ming Calvaryman delivering official documents)

It goes without saying that they Great Wall was built by man power. As you look at the pictures and all of the individual stones that make up the Great Wall remember this and it will give you even more perspective on the wonder of the amazing construction.

The sign below this sculpture in the museum says, “During construction, working people accumulated much valuable experience. The most important was ‘building forts suited to terrain.” I don’t know why they chose the path they did for the wall, it certainly wasn’t the most convenient path. I would imagine that they looked at the landscape and chose the places where nature and wall put together would provide the best defense.

As you can see in this picture, this tower is larger, both in footprint and in height, than the other towers. I read that some of the towers were used for houses for the higher ranking officers and this tower is perhaps one of these.

Detail looking into a tower

Detail of stairs on the Great Wall

Far across the landscape you continue to see the Great Wall

Forbidden City

2012-03-21T12:01:00.002-07:00

On our first day in China our flight to Sanmenxia (the city where we worked at the orphanage) was cancelled and rebooked to later in the day so we had some time to go into Beijing center.

We walked through a beautiful park and then into Tian’anmen Square of which the Forbidden city is a part.

The Forbidden City is the former palace of the Ming and Qing dynasties (the Qing was the last dynasty in China). The emperor who had it built had a Buddhist advisor who had a dream that the emperor should build a palace in a northern capital. The Chinese characters for Beijing, 北京, mean “Northern Capital”. In the times of the dynasties the people paid taxes to the emperors and would have never been allowed into a palace. For this reason the Forbidden City is a symbolism of the benefits of Communism because it is now the people’s palace rather than being excluded from it (per the movie “China and the Forbidden City” made in the 70’s).

The sculpted ramp in the middle of the picture is a dragon sculpture. It was believed that the emperor was descended from the dragon and that the emperor had direct communication with deity. No one was allowed to step on this sculpture and the emperor was carried over it by people walking on the steps on either side. Even now the area is gated off but perhaps more for preservation than the area being sacred.

The yellow roofs are the emperor’s colors and the design of the roof line was repeated in the the other imperial palaces. The two pictures below show detail of the roof. There were always dragons on the corner of the roofs.

Detail of dragons on Forbidden City gates

This is the footpath in the gardens of the palace. I saw intricate “mosaics” like these all over the other palaces that I visited as well.

中国 – Zhongguo – Center Country

2012-03-21T10:58:00.001-07:00

I was intimidated by China before going. Part of this was because I had so little information about the OT work we would be doing. But much of it was because I expected China to be so different and foreign from what I had experienced before. While in China I was frequently amazed at how normal and comfortable it felt and how easily I adapted to the little differences, like the weave of buses, cars, bikes, and people that comprise a city intersection. I called it “threading the needle.” You find that one space amidst all the traffic and move yourself through it. Chinese intersections truly are an amazing phenomenon of instinctual organization in a seemingly chaotic space.

This is a time lapse video that I took on the path to the Qing tomb museum/Terracotta Warrors, at a Beijing intersection, the Great Wall, and the Yuyuantan (park) in Beijing.

Snowbasin Ski Resort - Time Lapses

2012-03-03T09:22:00.004-08:00

As I've been watching time lapse videos on YouTube, I've noticed that several people have done videos where they are moving while taking the time lapse. Here are a couple of examples that I like.

I decided to try this technique while on the Becker ski lift at Snowbasin. Here is the video I made.

There are a lot of things that I don't like about the quality but I am excited to see that the technique works. I want to try it while driving by setting up the tripod and camera in the passenger seat. With my interval timer, I can hit the button once and not have touch it again until I stop the car. I want to try it while riding my bike but I may need different gear for that because my tripod and DSLR would be overwhelming to ride with!

While I was up as Snowbasin, I also took a more traditional time lapse overlooking Porcupine lift and the Ogden Valley.

Adding captions to YouTube Videos

2012-02-29T20:08:00.005-08:00

As an occupational therapist I care a lot about accessibility. The whole foundation of my profession is working with people to enable them to participate in the things that they want and need to do in their daily lives. Often all it takes to enable participation is that the environment be made accessible. It is for this reason that, when I entered a video contest on Vimeo, I was really embarrassed when someone pointed out that I had not made my video accessible because I had not used captions. I, like most people, am learning how to use technology as I am using it and can only create at a very basic technical level. Fortunately, creating closed captions with YouTube videos is very basic and easy. Mashable has a tutorial and I will link to that because I can't explain it any better. http://mashable.com/2010/01/16/youtube-captions-how-to/

The easiest method is to do the captions by voice recognition. After you transcribe the video, Google's voice recognition places the captions into the right spot in the video and I was amazed at how accurately it was able to do it. I noticed with the following video that using this method the timing is off at the very end but other than that the timing was pretty true.

Using Caption Tube is more accurate but also more time consuming and technical. I found that I had to wait for it to buffer multiple times when working with the following video which is only 22 seconds long. I somehow ended up with double captions in places and I was happy to see that CaptionTube saved my work and I was able to go back and make edits. Even though this method was more technical and time consuming I think that it gets easier with a little bit of practice. Here is a video that I captioned using CaptionTube.

Time Lapse Photography - a beginners tutorial

2012-02-29T08:54:00.002-08:00

I don't remember exactly when I got interested in time lapse photography. I do however remember when I became obsessed with it. It was December 2011 just after the remote control interval timer for my DSLR camera arrived in the mail.

The basic technique of time lapse is that you take a sequence of photographs at an interval, put those photographs into a video processing program, and set them to play back at a much faster interval. I generally take one picture per second and then play them back at 14-60 frames per second. I used Windows Movie Maker http://explore.live.com/windows-live-essentials-movie-maker-get-started and set up the duration for .07 - .03 seconds. .07 equals about 14 frames per second and .03 equals about 33 frames per second. If I want to make the movie faster I have to process it a second time and make the speed, for example 2x faster (i.e. on the first round of processing set the duration for .03 seconds to get 33 frames per second and on the second round of processing set it for 2x faster to get 66 frames per second). I am sure that there are programs that will make a time lapse video with fewer steps but for my needs right now it works great.

When I first learned about time lapse photography, I searched the internet and went to a couple of photography shops to see if I could find an interval timer for my Canon Rebel XT DSLR. I couldn't find any that would work with my "older" camera and the camera shop employees confirmed this to be true. I decided that I still wanted to learn the technique and thus turned to my point and shoot camera. My Canon PowerShot SD780 IS has a timer feature where with one press of the shutter button it will take 10 consecutive shots. On a Winter trip to Zion National Park and Bryce Canyon National Park, I hunkered down next to my point and shoot mounted on my gorilla pod tripod and pressed the shutter button every 10 seconds to capture these images. The technique works well enough but it creates an inevitable slight shift of camera position every 10 frames. Despite the bouncyness of the videos I still really like them. If you want to get into doing time lapse photography and you have this feature I think that it is worth giving a try.

While looking at posts on Google+ around the time of Black Friday, one of the photographers I follow posted a deal from a photography web site I had never been to before. I couldn't afford the camera he had linked to but while I was there I did a quick search that lead me to an interval time that would work for my camera. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=interval+timer+canon+rebel+xt&N=0&InitialSearch=yes

After it arrived, I took my camera , my new interval timer, and the instruction manual to the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge http://www.fws.gov/Nisqually/ near Olympia, Washington. The first 20 seconds of this video are my first attempts at using it. You can see that the video is moving at different speeds. This is because I was taking some shots manually as well as trying out different intervals (i.e. a shot every second, every two seconds, etc.)

The next morning I got up early and searched for a spot to photograph the sun rising behind Mount Rainier. It was about 29 degrees outside so I set up the tripod, camera, and interval timer and jumped back into my car to watch the sunrise. With my remote, I have to press the button every 5 minutes rather than every 10 seconds. At some point I realized that I had my white balance set to tungsten. I left it alone for a while but finally decided to change it to a more natural white balance. I realized from this that when doing time lapse you have to make sure that your settings are exactly where you want them because time lapse really magnifies your mistakes.

The next morning I went back to the same spot and, although the sunrise was not as spectacular, I was more careful about making sure my white balance, shutter speed, and f-stop were where I wanted them before I started the interval timer.

Here is the latest time lapse I did at Deception Pass State Park. http://www.parks.wa.gov/parks/?selectedpark=deception%20pass The majority of the water from the Puget Sound exits and enters the sound via the Straight de Juan de Fuca but 2% of it passes through this narrow channel. This creates wild and dangerous currents. The water below the bridge swirls and bubbles. You can get a minor sense of this from the video.

Jonathan Coulton

2012-02-27T20:52:00.004-08:00

One of the things that makes me happiest about the internet is artists like Jonathan Coulton http://www.jonathancoulton.com/ who create great music and encourage their fans to build upon it. Here are my two favorite YouTube videos created by fans.