Here's a little clip of some footage that I've gathered over the past couple weeks;
It's just a rough edit of some of the footage I've gathered so far which shows the quietness and stillness of the farm over winter. Let me know your thoughts!
I returned to Cusgarne Farm last week to record some film footage and an interview with Greg and I managed to catch their annual apple pressing! They make and sell pressed apple juice from their own orchards, and I can honestly say after sampling some freshly pressed that afternoon that its some of the best I've had! Here are some stills from the footage I captured which show part of process;
So here's some shots from yesterday's shoot in the studio. I'm not all that used to shooting in a studio setup and I've got a lot to learn. I am looking at comparing the products sold in supermarkets, and those sold from Cusgarne Farm's shop. So here are some of the more weird and wonderful looking carrots that wouldn't have made it to the supermarket shelves but are just as tasty, if not more!
So here starts a new year and a new project! I'm looking at organic farming and today was my first shoot. Over the summer I visited Cusgarne Organic Farm, a local family run farm between Falmouth and Truro. They grow fruit and veggies (pretty much every type you've ever heard of and quite a few you haven't!), keep a herd of beef cattle and about 100 chickens. Here's my first selection from today;
It was pretty great to be out shooting again and I'm excited for what this project holds in store!
So its been a while... I'm working a 9-5 office job over the summer so haven't been able to get out much, but I do have a beautiful walk to work everyday;
Here's a clip of part of the final video of this project. I've been spending the last week rendering and re-rendering timelapses and collecting some extra footage. This coming week I'm working with my housemate to make a soundtrack for it, and the final video should be ready to upload by Friday! I can't wait!
Hi Bloggers! I'm excited to announce my new website... www.lydiaharris.net
I built it using Adobe Muse which is pretty great to use, let me know what you think.
I'll still be using this blog to give updates on current projects, so have no fears!
I've just spent the evening in the studio filming the frogs. Good to get the amazing detail with the macro lens and I managed to get footage of one of them eating a blackfly! I'm going to release them pretty soon as they've finished their transformation, so this may be my final post as a frog owner! Look at older posts to see them from tadpoles.
Here are some stills from tonight's footage;
So after a long wait the bluebells in Cornwall are out in all their glory. I went down to Enys Gardens, home to the largest area of open parkland bluebells in the country. I primarily did some filming and a couple of timelapses, but here are some macro shots that I couldn't resist taking.
So the transformation from tadpole to frog is coming along nicely. I spent the day filming the six of them in their tank. Here's the most developed one of them;
I have now packed away the studio I've been using over the last 4 weeks, and so begins the mammoth task of sorting through the photos. I have over 30,000 images to go through, sort and reorder. By the end of this I'll have some idea of what I have, and what else I need to capture. I want to move onto outdoor timelapses of landscape scenes.
Here is the raw footage of the grape hyacinth growth... it didn't grow as I had expected but I have plenty to work with.
Update on the frogs - they survived their car journey across the country, are doing well and are growing their back legs!
Here's a rough cut of the footage shot of the tadpoles. Shot with a 60mm macro lens on a light box...
These are the same ones as hatched in the previous video and will be growing legs soon.
Apologies for the over dramatic music... it was a quick edit!
So this last week has been one of successes, failures and lessons learnt.
The frogspawn was a great success and are rapidly turning into pretty huge tadpoles. Here's a rough cut of the timelapse of the frogspawn hatching into tadpoles;
The snowdrop timelapse failed due the snowdrop dying, probably due to the warmth of the room, and the timelapse of the roots, although they had a very promising start, have ceased growing.
I have however moved on and have new setups. I've decided to capture the flowering of these plants, as growth right from the bulb is just too prone to mistakes. Here are the primrose, snow bell (snowdrop hybrid) and grape hyacynth stills;
This last weekend I set up my timelapse of roots growing. A week ago I planted a shoot of mint in a glass container. They are known for growing pretty fast so hopefully will be a good choice. I made sure that they grew along the side of the container by sectioning off one half of it and putting in complete darkness.
A few days later roots started to grow and I decided to make a place to photograph it. The roots have to be in darkness because the roots grow away from the light, so I built this out of curtain black out lining and a lot of safety pins. There is a hole for the lens and the flash and a timer is taking a photo every 10mins.
The results are looking good so far and will hopefully carry on!
So on the way back from my 3rd trip to B&Q in 2 days, I spotted a huge pile of frogspawn in a muddy and almost dried out puddle.
I took a sample and have set up a timelapse on it overnight. I doubt it will do much in these early days, but I want to capture the growth from right at the beginning. Here's the camera set up;
On the lightbulb front, I've made headway at last! I found a suitable fitting and with the use of a timer I can have it on fixed time settings and fingers crossed it will not overheat! (Many thanks to the technicians and the Campus Electrician) I'll be setting up the rest of the timelapses which needed the daylight bulb in the next few days.
So today saw the planting up of the snowdrops and the setting up an overnight trial run, mainly to work out interval times and also to see if the flash batteries will last for that long!
I'm struggling with my lighting at the moment. The room where I am has no natural light which is a blessing as I have complete control over the lighting, but not such good news for the plants. My zoology housemate managed to procure a uv lightbulb from her biology lecturer, however it is from an age where 160watt light fittings were available thus I spent the afternoon fruitlessly wandering round various electical suppliers trying not to look like a grow-your-own weed smoking student. I'm still searching, so if anyone has any electrical wisdom they could pass on I would be very grateful!
So new semester kicks off with a new project. I am looking at seasonal change from winter to spring and as part of this I'm going to be doing studio timelaspses of growth. I will be shooting all your archetypal spring plants; bluebells, snowdrops, primroses, lily of the valley, cyclamen, as well as looking a root growth, and hopefully frogspawn.
Here is the full kit I'm going to use (apologies for the ugly carpert!). So for the next 4 weeks I'm going to have 3 setups running at any one time so as to get as much footage as I can.
I'll be posting new updates and works in progress as the term goes on!
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