Incito Exhibition in Bristol

I'm all packed up and ready to go to Bristol tomorrow! I'm part of an exhibition at the RWA running from the 6th-14th July. Please come along if you're around and see everyone's work, it's going to be great! See our website for more details...

Lunchtime!

At the farm everyone takes a turn at cooking lunch once a week. It's great that they get to eat together and the conversation and stories round the dinner table are priceless!

Cusgarne Apple Pressing

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;

All images © Lydia Harris 2012

Carrot Portraits

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!

Summery Goodness

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;

All images ©Lydia Harris 2012

Sneak Preview

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!



All Content ©LydiaHarris

Website

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!

Farewell Frogs

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;

A somewhat action-blurred shot...

All images ©Lydia Harris 2012

Bluebells

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.

If you can make it down there, by this weekend you should see them fully opened. http://www.enys.co.uk/index.html

Frog!

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;

Cataloguing

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!

Tadpoles

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! 

Progress

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;

All images ©Lydia Harris 2012

Timelapse Blooper

So here's the result of the first night trial run... it may take those with a few years of photographic training to see what went wrong.

I have now invested in a large reel of tape...

Roots

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!

Frogspawn!

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.

Trial Run

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!

India

All images copyright Lydia Harris