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!
